I’m attempting to get my readings and reactions to the readings done very early in the week, and then hopefully visit other blogs and the Moodle site to share ideas with my classmates.

Week One is covering definitions of Connectivism. I’m just going to get my ideas in my blog as I read. Actually I started using Diigo (I am shocked about this too!).

Reading One: Little Boxes, Glocalization and Networked Individualism

Here’s a quote from the article that I think actually over-simplifies the sociological history of small worlds:

These groups often have boundaries for inclusion and structured, hierarchical, organization: supervisors and employees, parents and children, pastors and churchgoers, organizational executives and members. In such a society, each interaction is in its place: one group at a time.

OK, maybe post-Industrialization, but has this always been true? I don’t think it is, and I think some of the arguments of how people acted in pre-Industrialized times are extremely simplified.

The only reason I bring this up is that small worlds interact in this networked way all the time. Not seeing these communication patterns, and including them as real ways of communication,  only increases the chances that these members of society are going to fall further into the digital divide as we plot out these new computer networked paradigms.

I do like this point:

Computer mediated communications supplements, arranges and amplifies in-person and telephone communications rather than replacing them (emphasis mine).

I think this is hard for people who aren’t used to online communications online. It is one of the things that led me to creating websites and groups in the first place: how could a poor girl from no where (me) actually be able to talk to someone who wrote a book I had to read for college? That was crazy!

Reading Two: What is the Unique Idea in Connectivism?

I’m having a hard time understanding how Connectivism is different than Constructivism.  One of the only differences I can see is the inclusion of tools as part of the learning theory. I know people will throw things at me for using that word (tools), but sorry I don’t see how my knowledge can lie in a database someplace. I may have a representation of something I know at a particular point in time recorded in ones and zeros in a database, but that data set also exists in my head someplace. Recalling it, reshaping it, using it to scaffold new ideas seems to be covered by the Constructivist theories.

Reading Three: What connectivism is:

I used Diigo to mark up this article (I am gminks on diigo)

Reading Three: Bill Kerr Critique of connectivism

I used Diigo to mark up this article