Its too much!!

The web has its stranglehold on me. I'm struggling to keep up with what I want from it. Aaaarrrgh! How do I handle it.

Ok, settle down. This is simply a matter of prioritisation. I have yet again taken on more than I can handle. Most is voluntary, personal learning and the sort. Reading blogs, trying to comment on blogs. I need to find ways to fit all this in.

I don't have the answer yet. I'll let you know when I do.

What it does highlight is that there is no way to keep up with everything as it evolves. Impossibility. I just need to let some stuff go.

Initially, this will be FOC08 and CCK08. These will both be useful courses but I am not keeping up with the requirements within them. I'm also trimming my blogroll. This will be reflected in the sidebar soon enough.

I'm getting more involved in Diigo and can see how this may make me slightly more productive.

Expanding my mind - What is a community?

After a recent email discussion and a direct comment on my misunderstanding of the Facilitating Online Communities course (FOC08), I have retreated to the corner for some quiet reading and thinking time. As our facilitator had stated and challenged, teachers were hesitant to step outside their experience of education to contemplate community facilitation in a broader context.

So I've chased some reading and listening, and some thoughts, to expand my understanding of what Leigh Blackall is attempting to get us to consider. These thoughts below are not inter-related, but have stemmed from my thinking, reading and listening.

Firstly, I should consider the concept of community similar to what is my PLN. There are a range of connections I utilise to provide me inspiration and knowledge, but I do not manage them. The information they generate is independent of me, however they form a significant part of what is me. My facilitation of these is simply seek, sort and utilise. It was when I considered this that I began to understand (hopefully) what Leigh is talking about. So what roles exist in this community. Certainly I am the moderator, selecting to digest and utilise only the information I deem important or interesting. My moderation does not extend to influence over what information is published or posted within the PLN, simply what is attended to. In regards to facilitation, I believe this relates to the environment I establish for the PLN. For example, I use a netvibes account to aggregate the blogs I read and juice for podcasts. Times of aggregation and distribution from there is my facilitation. Do I have a teaching role in this community, I don't believe so.

Secondly, I reflected on my experience within my son's soccer team. As the coach I have a direct role for teaching, and this is obvious. I then thought of community as how the parents interact. We organise outings to the park, volunteering for reffing and washing jerseys, collecting match payments etc. No-one takes control of this, is just happens. This to me represented the community aspect. A group coming together under similar interests, and interacting within the environment. Each person offered to contribute, and the others supported the contribution. Again, within this community there is no teaching and I perceive we all facilitate to a degree. With this particular community I perceive moderation would be personal and internal.

To delve back into my world as a teacher, I can see how this developing understanding could produce interesting learning experiences and outcomes within my classes. It certainly ties in with my beliefs about connectivism and transformative learning.

I believe I am beginning to develop a true understanding of community and how their existence and function does not necessarily have to end in an educational goal.

Connectivism

As I embark on the massive open online course that is Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, I reflect on what the concept of connectivism is for me. Its important to note as I explore ways of working and experiment with my practice that my understanding of connectivism and its application to education within my context is fluid.

Firstly, my practice is based in beliefs of three (3) learning theories; constructivism, connectivism and transformative learning. Within my practice they are entwined and do not exist without the others. I have explained this through an analogy of the body's energy systems. There are three chemical systems that build ATP within the body's muscles (ATP is the chemical broken down to provide energy for muscular contraction). These three systems work simultaneously to provide energy dependent on the activity undertaken by the body. At any one time, a specific energy system is dominant but this will change with activity change.

This is how the three learning theories I follow are implemented into my practice. At any particular time they are all present, however a specific one will be dominant. The dominance is managed by me, but not necessarily decided by me.

Within constructivism, I am particularly emphasise social constructivism, which aligns with connectivism. Clearly within a constructivist environment the learner is building their own knowledge. Its important to teach them how to connect to the knowledge of others (I term this collaborative knowledge in my classes, although networked learning possibly describes this better) and therefore not rely on themselves holding all knowledge - an important lesson for teachers!!

I am yet to facilitate a completely open environment where learners seek and make their own connections, as I have been concerned with the productivity of such connections (social friends vs critical friends). This does however work against transformative learning theory where the power in the learning relationship is passed to the learner.

I've used a connectivist approach to vastly increase my pool of knowledge for a range of things. Technology has enhanced my ability to do this, exponentially increasing the connections I can make and maintain. Yes connectivism is possible outside of technology hardware and software, its potential is however limited.