Something new every day...

I have been reading OLDaily for several years so I am familiar with
some of Stephen's thinking. As he frequently includes and comments on
the posts of George as well as other eduResearch notables like David
Wiley and Dave Cormier, much of what we are calling Connectivism isn't
new.

It has been interesting to participate in a MOOC. The potential of the
web for teaching and learning was evident from my earliest encounter.
Parvati Dev, the Director of SUMMIT - Stanford University Medical
School's group that was innovating in the use of all sorts of
technologies to support student learning, had access to the world wide
web and an early copy of Mozilla. This was in the spring of 1994. HTML
was easy for those of us with a programming background and experience
with other Markup Languages - GML, SGML. Add links to documents and
images anywhere on earth, and WOW!

The evolution from scientist-publishers to professional site
developers was a step backwards in some respects. When the web was
about scientists sharing research papers as text and graphs, so long
as the presentation was neat and readily available, everyone was
happy. The connections were there, and everyone got back to work with
access to information that would have taken years to access via the
traditional means of peer reviewed journals and academic conference
presentations. Then along came the marketing folks - it was all about
image and fancy formats and breathtakingly gorgeous splash screens.
Citizen publishing essentially disappeared for many years.

But all that has changed. We have social networks, blogs for all,
Fickr, Twitter, Digg and Second Life. But more importantly, we have
Wikipedia, OpenCourseware, Connexions and WikiEducator. Finally, we
are back on track to get some serious kick-ass learning going here.

While working on my Masters in Education (with a specialization in
Online Teacjing and Learning) at CSU East Bay (formerly known as CSU
Hayward), we reviewed a lot of learning theories. There are several
sites that list hundreds of these so the need for YALT
(yet-another-learning-theory) isn't a high priority. While I think it
is fine that lots of folks are having a lovely time in esoteric
arguments about the minutia, I'm just as happy to be running with the
little dogs who are off leveraging "it" - whatever Connectivism is,
and exploring practical applications and going out and building stuff.

The Connectivism course is both a learning experience and a dynamic
model of connectivism as I understand it. Lots of people are
connecting and learning. There is a general knowledge space - mostly
to do with education and learning, but brain science, psychology,
neural networking, management, academic administration, information
systems, learning management systems, instructional design, marketing,
communications, cool new technologies, and gaming all have their
places. This may be messy but it clearly demonstrated the ideas and
reality of Connectivism.

As someone who made it through the traditional education system, as
much by good fortune as anything, I am right out front helping to make
alternative learning experiences available to anyone and everyone who
is not well served by the current status quo in formal academic
education in North America today. It has been clear from the outset
that the internet provided the tools and infrastructure that could be
important elements to facilitating these changes when the time came.
It has taken surprisingly long for a critical mass to "get it" but now
we are on a roll, I think. Sure, there are many outstanding questions,
but they will be addressed in time. In the meantime, real progress is
being made on all fronts. Thanks to Stephen and George, as well as
Leigh, and the Dave's, and everyone involved in the Connectivism
movement.

What all of this demonstrates is that it really does take all kinds to
make a world. It is very exciting to be part of this adventure. It is
good to be working with literally hundreds of wonderful people who
care about the world and its people, who want to make communities
everywhere inclusive and empowering. It is great being part of the
solution called Connectivism.

Back to the dark side http://learningonline.blogspot.com/

It's been interesting but I need to consolidate.

Darn it. I see a really interesting partial post by Nellie on Generosity - someone I greatly admire and who's great effort in organizing the WikiEducator Council election should be recognized and celebrated. And, bang - sorry you can't read the whole post or add a comment.

This leads to some thinking, and I hope, some further discussion about making and breaking connections (CCK08). And open / closed communities (FOC08). What's in it for me? If I block comments utilizing the provided screening devices, then I don't have to deal with the spam and annoying poor connectivism hygiene of others.

In a community where the primary communication is via discussion forums, there is the problem of the Commons - in a large open discussion, everyone is a user or a guest and no one assumes responsible for the ongoing sustainability of the resource. They post what they want, even if it means others are turned off by the frequency and/or tone of their posting. We have seen this to some extent in the CCK08 course in the Moodle discussions. A more closely held, closed community is better at dealing with this format. All participants accept and share responsibility.

Well, yes but... Houshuang says "I really want my research to be available to everyone ... approval is taking too long, so I am also publishing the files here on my blog. ... Creative Commons BY license. I am eager that as many people as possible that would be interested in this topic are able to come across it, so feel free to share it with others that are interested. I am also very happy to receive feedback and other perspectives"

This may be representative of most blogging - intended as primary personal statements, observations and links to other information of interest. A community that is built around blogs can be very open and inclusive as each member controls their own space within the community. In FOC08 and the blogs associated with CCK08, the openness is clearly a benefit. There have been protests from the community when registration is required to view and/or comment on blog entries. Openness is not only desirable, but expected, at least among the blog commenting participants in CCK08.

Returning to Nellie's post on Generosity, I actually have a Ning account and reluctantly logged in to read the post and comment. I wouldn't do this for just anyone. Nellie is very special.

FOC08 Looking for online community: Discussion forums

Great technology can make a huge difference to the community vitality. The task of facilitation changes dramatically when the underling software environment provides information that helps build and sustain the community. It doesn't eliminate or diminish the role of the facilitator, but it does change the nature of the role. More time can be devoted to high-order facilitation tasks when the technology is automatically taking care of basic administration functions, accumulating activity information, and providing direct feedback to the community about itself and its members.

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience. This is a project of Carnegie Mellon University to explore alternatives to increase enrollments in computer science classes, especially by girls.

The Alice.org community includes current users of the software, teachers, students and others interested individuals. Where use of Alice is associated with a programming class, students and teacher participation in the community may be limited to the duration of the course session.

Alice community forums Currently Active Users: 42 (3 members and 39 guests) Threads: 1,559, Posts: 6,363, Members: 3,480

• comprehensive FAQs
• online form to email administrators
• administrators, with online/offline status indicator
• good forum search capability
• membership restricted areas - calendar
• registration - forum rules defined, agreement required
• what's new tab
• posts are viewable by guests
• guests (nice word for non-members) Posting Rules You may not post new threads You may not post replies You may not post attachments You may not edit your posts BB code is On Smilies are On [IMG] code is On HTML code is Off
• classes of members - junior (high school student), senior, administrator, member
• number of posts - most post 834 (senior member), 10th highest 95 (including 1 of the administrators - third most posts, others all senior members), top 10 total post 2976 of 6363 total (47% of all posts), regular member with highest number of posts 49 posts 15th most
• last post - today Sept 6, 2008, earliest post - July 2005
• global participation - CMU is in Pittsburgh, PA, recent questions from Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Canada, Portugal
• forum very conducive to community - avatars, member stats and information including location, member type, number of postings, member since..
• Lounge provided for off-topic posts
• great newsletter
• members are fielding questions, not just the administrators

Facilitation in the Alice Community Forum

• not much formal facilitation beyond providing the environment and responding to Alice and forum technology questions
• some invitations for suggestions and comment - new features, forum organization (gabe)
• good quick response to most questions, several members (DrJim) are acting as facilitators as well as community members
• a subgroup of users is working to generate additional interest in the Alice community

Some facilitation suggestions

• use the What's new forum topic to recognize and promote the work of community members
• promote the community beyond the community to schools offering Java and other programming languages
• encourage the community to recruit and spread the word - this is a great tool for teaching and learning Object Oriented Programming (OOP) and could have even wider distribution
• host an "event" to showcase the work of community members
• encourage members to complete / expand or update their member profiles
• suggest that members add a picture or avatar to their profiles
• seed The Lounge forum with related timely topical questions for discussion
• add a forum topic to collect links to references to Alice in publications, training materials,...

I wish them every success with the Alice 3D programming environment community and hope that it grows beyond their wildest dreams.

Another non-native Northern California resident says Hi

I'm originally from Toronto, Canada, now living north of San Francisco.

As a long time reader of Stephen Downes' OLDaily, the course offers a
unique opportunity to explore some of the ideas around connectivism
discussed by others. In addition to teaching an undergrad course about
Computers and the Internet in Society, I also facilitate faculty
workshops on using technologies to support teaching and learning. A
logic extension leads to Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, I
hope.

There is so much great information available on the internet that
learners can be overwhelmed. I'm looking for ways for learners to
figure out what it is they want / need to learn and to make use of
these resources. Is that Connectivism? We'll see...

Whatever happens in the CCK08 course will be a success. This is
shaping up to be something quite unique with 1000+ participants. Lots
of learning will be happening very quickly - for participants,
observers and most of all, the facilitators! Good luck, George and
Stephen - you are going to need it.

On Tue, Sep 2, 2008, to my 20-something son who is an early iPhone adopter, I wrote:
http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/6-reasons-to-reject-the-iphone/
What would you say?

His reply: