Week 3 George Siemens

We live as an integrated experience—we see, know, and function in connections. Life, like knowing, is not an isolated activity—it is a rich, interconnected part of who we are. We cannot stop the desire to know.
The desire to know is balanced with our desire to communicate, to share,to connect, and our desire to make sense, to understand—to know the meaning. In an effort to make ourselves understood, we create structures.
To hold our knowledge: hierarchies, books, libraries, encyclopedies, the internet,search engines.
We create spaces where we can dialogue about and enact knowledge: organizations, schools, universities, societies. And we create tools to diseminate knowledge: journals, discussion panels, conferences.

Week 3 Connectivism

George Siemens talks about connectivism in one of his book.

Connectivism -> combines relevant elements of many learning theories, social structures, and technology to create a powerful theoretical construct for learning in the digital age.

Two principles of connectivism I find very
interesting:

Learning and knowing are constant, on going processes.

Decision making is learning.Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

While reading I found this paragraph:

We come to know in many ways.

◉. through senses, observation, and experience.
◉. through thinking and logic
◉. through intuition (“gut feel”)
◉. through revelation (the“Aha”moment)
◉. through authority (validated, trusted)
◉. through connections (our personal learning network)

Seven broad societal trends

1.The rise of the individual

2.Increased connectedness

3.Immediacy and now

4.Breakdown and repackaging

5.Prominence of the conduit

6.Socialization

7.Blurring worlds of physical and virtual

Week 2 Blended learning & E-learning

Blended learning is a term that represents a shift in instructional strategy.

It is a mix of traditional face to face teaching and learning combined with electronic learning -> The best of both worlds.

Blends are characterized by customization, integration, purpose, flexibility, and redundancy. The alternative—one-size-fits-all—is no way to serve a global workforce.” (Allison Rossett)





E-learning is defined as the use of multimedia technologies and the internet to improve the quality of learning. An effective way of facilitating and optimising the learning processes.

Diana Laurllard is is head of the E-learning Startegy Unit at the Department for Education and Skills in the U.K







The basic premisi of her work is that technology should not be used to replicate existing classroom practice but should be exploited to do what is not possible in the classroom”

Week 2 Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants

From a gaming 16 year old student.

I don’t want to study Rome in high school. Hell, I build Rome every day in my online game, Ceasar III.

"The single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will work for their students now. But that assumption is no longer valid. Today’s learners are different. “Www.hungry.com” said a Is it that Digital Natives can’t pay attention, or that they choose not to? Often from the Natives’ point of view their Digital Immigrant instructors make their education not worth paying attention to compared to everything else they experience – and then they blame them for not paying attention! " (Marc Prensky)

The differences between Natives and Immigrants according to Marc Prensky that lead to problems between the two "groups". There is miscommunication and misunderstandig because of their different frameworks.

Twitch Speed vs Conventional Speed
Parallel processing vs Linear processing
Random acces vs Linear thinking
Graphics first vs Text first
Connected vs Stand alone
Active vs Passive
Play vs Work
Payoff vs Patience
Fantasy vs Reality
Technology as friend vs Technology as foe

Week 1 VKB -> Mindmaps

Building knowledge is not easy. We have to fliter and structure information in order to build knowledge. Because all knowledge is information, but not all information is knowledge (Siemens) we have to be critical and ask ourself: Is this relevant? Does this fit my framework?

Mind maps help structure information. Our brain is a mind map.

Week 1 Knowledge?

Knowledge is defined variously as facts, information and skills aquired by a person through experience or education.

We also have ...

A knowledge Building theory that was created and developed by Carl Breiter
and Marlene Scaramalia. It referes to the process of creating new cognitive artifacts as a result of common goals, group discussions, and synthesis of ideas.

One of the hallmarks of knowledge building is a sense of we superseding the sense of I, a feeling that the group is operating collectively and not just as an assemblage of individuals.

So what is the difference between knowledge building and learning?

Scardamalia & Bereiter see learning is an internal, (almost) unobservable process that results in changes of beliefs, attitudes, or skills.

By contrast, knowledge building is seen as creating or modifiing public knowledge. Knowledge Building is knowledge that lives ‘in the world’ and is available to be worked on and used by other people.

A Knowledge Building Community (KBC) is a community in which the primary goal is knowledge creation rather than the construction of specific products or the completion of taks. If knowledge is not realized for a community than we do not have knowledge building.