Last week, George Siemens put up .pdf’s of his new book Knowing Knowledge, and I’ve been reading through it on and off for the last couple of days. It’s been pushing my thinking even more about what connectivism and connected learning really is, and I’m amazed at how much it resonates with my own experience.
The idea that knowledge is not only a product but is also a process.
That know where and know who are much more important today than know what or how.
That learning is all about network creation and attending to that network.
That the learner is the teacher is the learner.
For me, that last one is what has made this such a powerful journey, and is one of the biggest shifts in thinking that I’ve had. In my “now” network, I am constantly shifting in the roles I play, most often acting as learner, but occasionaly, perhaps as teacher who then learns from the experience of teaching. And my learning is transparent; I model the way I find, synthesize, process and publish information at almost every turn. And in that sharing, I become teacher. It is an ongoing process, a negotiation not only with the material I consume about the subjects which I am passionate about but with the understanding of that material, the learning, in the context of the way the network offers it or responds to it. It’s about as far from the transmission model of learning as you can get, yet that’s still the way we look at learning in our schools.
At any rate, check out George’s book…I’m sure I’ll be writing more later.
technorati tags:connectivism, George_Siemens, education, learning, knowledge, weblogg-ed
People love to react to the present status quo, so now we have a dichotomy of the where and who being more important than the what or how. But what evidence do we have for this claim? If one can imagine shifting roles, then why not imagine that one needs to know where, who, what, and how, and that although in one particular context at a certain time with certain people, one aspect might be more important than others, that aspect will not always be more important.
Yummy. Powerful. This really helped me understand the way I’ve approached my new position as a technology integration consultant. It was sort of living in that deep subconscious part of me having been a part of this learning before. Thanks to both you and George for teasing it up to my conscious level and giving me something to point at.
Well said. I think where and who are just becoming more relevant than they used to be. And for evidence I look to my own experience. Where and who come before what and how…it’s how I get to what and how now. For me to want to learn what or how, I need to know where to find it and then choose who to learn it from. (This is a first draft of something…I’m sure there are many holes in that thinking.)
Learner is teacher is learner. That is a given for the eduweb 2.x, but I find many teachers in my neck of Kentucky are unwilling to invest in the time needed to acquire expertise in the tools so that they can teach the tools. This is not an indictment of them, but rather indicative of the zero sum game teaching has become–if I do this I can’t do that. And it is very hard to convince them that the tech creates a powerful tipping point that allows them to amplify existing skills at some mystical future date. To “believe” that this will really-and-truly-swear-to-God happen is beyond their capacities. (Considering that I live in the belt buckle of the Bible Belt I find that irony a delicious one.) I can prove it to them if they will come and watch and trust in their own capacity to make mistakes and be the learner, yet… I hate for this to be a “tease”, but I have written more about a practical example of this on my weblog. We are looking for practical ways aren’t we?