Connectivism & PLNs

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Comment by Frank on December 11, 2008 at 4:21pm

Getting a PLN together takes a little investment and going with the flow .. it has to be grown little by little. I think starting with Twitter was fun for me to get things going and growing. Teachers here also get very little admin time if any at all, which impact their ability to explore somewhat. Teaching must be their passion. If it is just a job to them, they will never get a PLN going, because it mostly happens on one's personal time, not paid time. So we that are passionate have a side-duty to motivate those that aren't. If we can help them to see the future and that it is today ... and what the objectives and goals are .. and how fun it can be... then they will get hooked one by one. But if that passion isn't to be kindled, then they will just muddle on doing a "job."

Comment by Leigh Thelmadatter on December 11, 2008 at 4:11pm

It can really be hard getting unconnected teachers to value the worth of PLN's Im just trying to get started with them here and its like pulling teeth!

Comment by Benjamin Stewart on October 21, 2008 at 7:32am

I enjoyed your presentation on Saturday, Frank. I think developing personal learning networks is a topic that we will be seeing more of in the future - especially as technology continues to transform how we view the "classroom" as a learning community. It was good to see other teachers there at MEXTESOL who share similar interests in this topic.

Comment by Leigh Thelmadatter on October 20, 2008 at 1:15pm

"Content is not filtered according to the ideology of one professor." Wow.. I can think of a old professor of mine or two that would be threatened by such.

Despite the problems, it still was a great presentation. Meeting with my boss later today to propose some of the teacher training, including using META, that I got from the conference. I was a little worried Sat. morning as I had not really encountered anything or anyone I could really connect with, but patience is a virture. Your presentation was great and I had another really good experience with the Research in Mexico presentation Sunday morning.

mmmmm who's interested in research here?

Comment by Frank on October 20, 2008 at 10:30am

My FaceBook core and periphery network.

Comment by Frank on October 19, 2008 at 7:15pm

I feel terrible that I had the flu (and no voice) and on and off Internet service for the presentation. The presentation is above however, in it's entirety.

Thanks to all of you that attended! Frank (Second Life, Salty)

Comment by Frank on September 21, 2008 at 6:01pm

Here is the missing Figure no. 5 from the quote cited below (paper to be released in Portugal presentation, October 2008)

Figure 5

Comment by Frank on September 20, 2008 at 8:45pm

New roles for learners and educators

"Traditional classrooms provide a particular shape to the learner-educator relationship. When a transition is made to networked models of learning, learners are able to form relationships with peers and experts from around the world. Content is not filtered according to the ideology of one professor. Instead, academic resources from different institutions and educators are utilized. The development of open educational resources, as evidenced by MIT's OpenCourseWare[7] and similar initiatives, provides learners with a far richer pool of resources on which to draw. A fluid network of relationships, as detailed in Figure 5, presents new learning experiences not found in a traditional model. Multiple perspectives and voices replace singular views of content and interaction." -- George Siemens (Oct 2008)