Smak posted in the chat: "@Stephen, George and others: Like to learn from you how decisions (say to connect and interact) are made". (Dec 1sr edit:John or Smak came by to let me know that Smak is his ID at Elluminate, thanks John!).p>
His question got me thinking because I belong, as far as I know, to the only group formed to make the final project. The team had set earlier an Elluminate session using the Webheads vRoom to decide what to add, change, agree on, etc. We are four members: Dolores from Spain, Carlos in Germany, Viplav in India and me from Mexico. Only Carlos and I managed to get there. It was very interesting to watch our struggles to get to decisions in a connective way, we had lots of fun! We are so diverse that it was not an easy task. I kept Smak question in mind and when Dave asked for speakers I raised my hand and at the appropriate time I got the mic, voiced his question and told them about our reaching decisions adventure.
Here are some of the questions and comments posted in the chat:
This is just the start! I would like to know about the research that surely will be conducted, keep me posted! LOL No one will post me, RSS will!
Playing with SplashCast to create a demo and a collaborative site for the team to work independently but collaboratively, I came up with this slide show. I hope you have as much fun as I had while creating it! (Only the first slide is in Spanish)
Wendy's exquisite video came to the table. Enjoy!
This video came to put in place more pieces of the puzzle. I've been thinking for a while that I need to define my needs and focus to get them covered. Obviously I don't have the right connections or I'm looking in the wrong directions or I'm not looking at all. I know about events serendipitously and many times I don't join the adventures I would like to participate in because I learn about them too late. So I need to observe myself, think and find out what I'm doing wrong. Else, I go to Hubs where owners start sending daily emails advertising things, pissing me off with "sales", "unique opportunities to make money" and stuff just like in FaceBook.
If they knew! LOL Money is not 
I'm looking for collaborators for my on my BaeL crusade, people that gets no harm speaking and writing in Spanish, bilingual people interested on Digital Literacy and web 2.0 tools but... what do I have to offer in return? Well... learners of Spanish, English, Basic Microsoft programs, e-tools and... plenty of data to do research. Ning provides plenty of data, that I don't know how to obtain yet but it's there for the taking. Yahoo Groups also provides data but not in the same handy way. I want to learn how to take advantage of the stats feature in Ning, the doors at Manchester University are open for me and a PhD sounds attractive but... that will take time.
Several "connections" have questioned the way I see my computer literacy or my illiteracies. They interpret that as lack of self esteem but I see that as a reality. I don't have a natural inclination to electronic devices or cables or plugs or computer tools; I'm clumsy, I take hours to do what Stephen suggest to do in ten minutes. It's the same with cooking, I'm not a natural chef; I spend hours cooking what my sister cooks in half an hour. In both areas I'm satisfied with my end products, the sites work, the tools do what they're supposed to do and the food tastes quite nice. Sometimes I receive compliments from both areas. The difference lies in that I have F.U.N. with the computer and I hate the kitchen. I rather spend my time having F.U.N.!
After Elluminate I went to 
(Btw: I don't know who Smak and Stian are. If someone knows their blogs, please share them to add the proper links here. Thanks).
Tonight, after the last Elluminate CCK08 session, I went to Dave Cormier's blog and found his post about Literacy. It was like if a veil was taken from my eyes, many of my discomforts found its place.
My reply there was:
Then I went to the Intro Emerging Tech 09 course wiki and found this video. What caught my attention was that I had seen it before, finding little sense; today, I found more sense. Maybe, if I watch it again in the future I will see more patterns.
This morning's events are also clearer now after reading Dave's post. I went 
An hour later we had our weekly SLexperiments
With my new avatar we went to Muvenation and met Daf there. Daf took us to where Dolores could join the Muvenation student's group that suited her needs and then we tested Daf's orientation site:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/MUVEnation/212/194/100
Having satisfied our needs we rested by the fire. It was a wonderful afternoon!
With my deepest gratitude to Dave, Stephen, George, Dolores, Steve and Daf.
I'm placing here the concepts I found more relevant and how I see them relating and influencing one another. The map itself has changed little, what has changed is how I understand it now. For example, over the past two weeks the issue of Openness has gained more weight.
I understand better now what has happened to me and my connections this year (2008). My offline connections have a new topic to talk about, besides that, the changes have been those brought about by life itself. My online connections have widened, I got now a lot of new weak connections and a few stronger new connections. With Becoming a Webhead (BaW08), Becoming an e-Learner project (BaeL), Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08), Connecting Online(CO09), Electronic Village Online moderator training (EVOMods09) and Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations (CLTI08) I have learned a lot this year. My mind view things in a different way.
I see clearly that to have people hanging around with me they have to gain something valuable. I understand now why when I had worked and pulled my share of work with some people who asked me to participate in their projects I got little or nothing in return when I asked for participation in mine. They considered me some sort of an asset during their projects, what I did provided something valuable them and I was learning. Once the project was ended if my project didn't go with their line of work they didn't participate, they wouldn't gain anything of value. Reciprocity does not have anything to do with it, it's just the way a network works. It's a description of a fact, not a complain.
I understand that Openness is a delicate issue for people and organizations. Some people and institutions say they are open to new ideas, that they want collaboration but in the practical sense they want you to do things in a certain way and don't accept changes. It's their organization, their project, their wiki, their site and they have the right to have it as they want it. It's very difficult to let go of power and control, to set a common goal, elicit participation and receive it as such. I don't see that happening soon. I didn't see evidence in Stephen's predictions on the future but what a wonderful piece to read.
His words: "To learn is not to acquire or to accumulate, but rather, to develop or to grow. The process of learning is a process of becoming, a process of developing one’s own self".
I wonder how could I use iCall? Stephen mentions that this allows events and syndicated contents to circulate within the same network, creating an association between time and content that is dynamic, fluid, and distributed.
How could I enable my communities? "At most, the educator needs to ensure that the tools are there for students to use, and that the channels of communication, from student to student, from community to community, are open".
I'm puzzled. Why didn't Stephen mention "Equity" in his recent SL Conference as a feature of Reliable Networks? Is that so unreachable?
Stephen Downes very kindly a
The content of his conference is available in the following videos that he gently provided before hand.
Talking to educators, he told them he wasn't going to talk about how to teach their students, he would rather talk about how could they manage their own learning because that was the important point.
His views of a Networked organization sound like a dream from the point of view of the members of an organization, to be able to choose which product to sell by pursuing your interests and talents would be fantastic. Can you imagine?
From the point of view of the organization itself, this view requires them to let go, to leave their mission behind, to foster openness, diversity, autonomy and connectedness. I guess the feeling there would be fear, you'll have to trust others, to believe they'll do their best in their field. Stephen mentioned that to manage a company in a traditional way is not efficient, people work for their own interest not for the interest of the company owners.
If we own an organization, what we have to think about is how to set activities that mean, quoting Stephen, "A mutually beneficial exchange of value". As Jorge Cuevas says: "Give others the chance to win too", this is, make others gain something valuable working with you, while you get something valuable also for yourself.
It was a pity that the SIM behaved so badly. There were people who could not hear a word of all that was said, the richness of Stephen's voice was lost for them; it's certainly not easy to translate to and from a text chat but it was a different experience. I had never translated online with no body language clues!
I think that the main reason lies on the self image that the teachers held about themselves and in the way in which the students perceive education. I wish I knew about a practical way to shift those positions.
The teacher's traditional position.
In a traditional way a teacher stands out of the crowd, in a 
Being a teacher gives you status, power over your learners, a position in life supported by your credentials and years of experience in the field. It's not easy to let go of that position, of the privileges perceived and of the underlying assumptions. Stephen Downes talks about this, among other things, in his post about Reusable Media, Social Software and Openness in Education.
Students point of view on education.
On the other hand, most the students regard school and homework as an imposed obligation that they don't enjoy.
Felipe (thinking): "Well, I better go do my homework."...
Felipe (thinking): "Damn!"
They act as Felipe, they wish that something would come along to get them of the hook. I have acted like that myself. Students come to the cyber place to do their homework and what they do is copy and paste from pages they Google, they don't reflect on what they put together. They try to do it fast to have time to add a picture to their photo blog (MetroFlog is their favourite), chat or visit their Hi5 spaces. If they happen to find a teacher that invites they to learn in an engaging way they respond eagerly but they expect leadership. If you leave them to choose what to learn and how to go about their learning they freeze. Talking to teenagers I've found they are confused, they know that even if they do well in their studies that doesn't warranty them a job or a better life in the future.
Matthias has a different point of view on this issues and looks into resistance in a broader way than me. Worth reading.
S. Downs puts forward an answer: "The idea that all of us, acting independently, but ensemble, en masse, can come up with something better than any individual in the group could by themselves. This is not a case of marching toward mediocrity, this is a case of the group simple being able to take into account more factors, more variables, than any given individual. The group being able to absorb more information than any individual. But for this to work, we have to have the open communication and access. We have to have the distributed non-centralized non-hierarchical model".
To teach in a non traditional way means to accept, claim, demonstrate and model that you don't have all the answers, that you are not better or worst than others, that you are only a bit different. It also means that you are open to share what you know and have, that you are open to persuasion.
I don't have a practical path to bring this change about. All I see is that maybe if we take responsibility of our own learning, model the behaviour we expect, provide examples, establish outcomes, set the table with what we see as goodies and invite others to share the meal we may shift the status quo a bit.
I found the following video at Tom White's blog. We are against inertia.
Despite the fact that this short article is a free roaming thought piece, I find myself with an acute feeling of the responsibility for what I write. It's hard to explain. This doesn't mean that I didn't feel responsible before, it means that I'm more aware of that responsibility as a part of a learning community. I see this as a beneficial outcome. I blame this to all the readings, interactions, talks and wonderful people I have met during the CCK08 course. Thanks to all of you.
The Official Quino Home Page can be found at http://www.clubcultura.com/clubhumor/quinoweb/
My answer to this questions can be found in this CCK08 Moodle thread, I'll post it here:
"As far as I see and as far as I have understood the connectivism model the role of the "teacher" is to sit back and let the students take control.
I mean sit back not with a bad connotation, of course SD and GS are not scratching their bellies! They are very busy keeping this three or four ring "circus" going. They invested many hours beforehand setting up the design, the layout, the Daily, pageflakes, Wiki, Elluminate, syllabus, inviting guest speakers, getting Dave to moderate, etc.
The most difficult part of online and offline teaching, is to get the learners flying on their own. Connectivism strives towards learners independence, to decentralize the learning process, to avoid hierarchies. To get that going you need to kind of disappear at the background. If you jump in, the learners will tend to ask YOU to take the lead. Because they recognize you as an authority figure, you'll mark and evaluate them.
I think a connectivism course doesn't have to be "cold" or "detached" to avoid learners dependency. Webheads, for example, don't promote dependency and their sessions are full of generosity and kind encouraging comments. They set tutorial's mechanisms at the side and point learners to go, click away, find out and sort things for themselves. They also, as a rule, set aside a week for informal networking along with a Nettiquete code. That time is used to make sure that all participants know how to handle their email accounts to avoid the overload feeling, to free participants from the technology issues to be able to focus in the content."
I was very impressed by the way Dave Cormier handled the evaluation of the CCK08 in his Elluminate session: with honesty. The picture is a screen shot of that session.
As Dave Cormier mentions, Webheads are kings on teaching online a knowledge moving target without losing people along the way.
I found some of Stephen Downes comments evaluating somehow the CCK08 course at one of Graham Attwell's posts.
I also found Cristina Costa's reflections about a course she gave, she is on of my admired Webheads, I don't know if her course had a connectivist approach but I definitely like the way they encouraged and aided the learners to participate; from backstage.
Preparing this post I ran across an open eye slide presentation that touches responsibility, enabling and community creation in an open source platform. By David Eaves.
When I signed up for the CCK08 course I knew it
As participant, the Webheads provided me with readings that helped me to understand my role as participant and to succeed in online courses. Issues like "Personal Learning Environments" (PLE), Online Courses Design, Learning Theories from the Online point of view, Properties of Networks, Instructional Design, Complexity and Chaos, Power and Control, Epistemology, History of Networked Learning, Collectives, Roles of the Teacher, Openness, etc. were all new concepts to me. Unfortunately, before this course I have never heard of Stephen Downs, George Siemens and connectivism.
When I opened my own online course, BaeL, I did not have 
Some Webheads joined and have not interacted, some were
ined FaceBook, I had so many friends already there that I started feeling concerned by my slow answer rate. Rita Zeinsteger, one of my most admired Webheads, told me then: "If it's not fun, it's not worth". It's one of the best advice I have received. To work online you need discipline, to set times to be in front of the computer and respect them, otherwise the overload may threat your life and well being. The new term I learned is: Burn out. Today at Ustream, in our weekly live session, Stephen Downes shared that "We have to focus, to know what we are looking for" If we surf the net with something in particular in mind we can handle overload better by narrowing our choices.
How do you handle the feeling of overload?, How do you manage your weak ties?, Do you feel comfortable in an environment where most of your ties are weak? This network environment is kind of new for me, your insights will be welcomed and very helpful.
The term I used to name de new role of the teacher, lurer, has a negative connotation in English; maybe in another languages too. To let me know about it Ariel, very gently, sent me the following twitts.
Kristina Hoeppner went farther, looked up the term and shared in the comment area: "A lot of times, at least in my understanding of the term, luring is used to make people do something they would never do on their own. I don't have a great idea for a possibly better word to use. All seem to have a somewhat negative implication attached to them."
Nancy White, with her bright mind and warm spirit came by to share that "In the facilitation world, an alternative term is "invitation." It has been long recognized in that domain that it is often more successful to invite people in rather than to require them. And that the quality of the invitation matters -- how do we make it irresistible?"
Jenny explains the above much better in her post called "A Good Teacher". I totally agree with her: "She (Nancy) is recognised world-wide, but her humility and obvious desire to be one of the learning group and not apart from it, is the mark of a good teacher." Nancy made a deep impression in my soul, she's always present
What do you think?. According to your views, what's the role of the teacher?. If you are a good f2f teacher, does that qualify you be be a good online teacher too?. If not, what else do you need to develop to become one?
I am glad to be back here, I enjoy very much your readings. I came here from today's daily and what attracted my attention was your post title "I made the news".
Congratulations!!! Did you write home about it as you mention? What did they say?
This is a response to your last three posts so if you don't have time now please skip it and keep the “Congrats” part.
If I don't get meaning is because they are meaningless to me, I cannot connect with them, I'm a "doer", I didn't find practical application on those readings and I have been living in a "connectivist" way for more than 20 years. Don't misunderstand me, I rather clarify.
"The pipe is not important".He did not think about the havoc he created to some that use their employers’ hardware and software to connect, he has said so several times on the live sessions:
"I don't care if you are learning, I'm learning!".On the other hand, let me tell you that as a "teacher" in an open non-authoritarian system you have to find ways to push your students towards the content you expect them to learn so to use your power is valid in that context. It's an effective behaviour.
Your question about the success or failure of the experiment is one that voices many participants' concerns, as you have measured with your visitors’ blog counter and comments, the question is lying there and they can easily say and justify that it was a success. Again, time will tell. But as participant you can define if it was a success for you or not. Was it a success for me? Though I cannot tell yet in a broad sense, I'm learning and I've met some valuable people not nodes. That’s for sure. Did I learn what connectivism is? It seems I didn't, I learned a new name to christen what I do.
Edd comments: “But I was most struck by your personal note at the end, about your 'core network' and the emotional impact of the course. This, too, is learning, and I think we should be open to sharing and discussing our emotional insights and reactions as well as our more cerebral ones. Those are also important elements of connection and something we need to consider as educators as we design connectivity into our teaching and learning. Does your core have hard boundaries, do you think, or is it more a question of degrees of connectedness, of a more fuzzy notion?”
My core network does not have hard boundaries, as Ed mentions is more a question of degrees of connectedness, it’s also emergent. Sometimes I am connected with part of the network depending of the issue at hand and the rest becomes kind of dormant. Sometimes it shifts in a day to day basis and sometimes it takes weeks to shift. There are even times when it shifts several times the same day. I feel I have been blessed with the core network I have, that feeling and my resent loss brought about the tears.
Sara mentions “Thanks you Ed and Maru for starting a thread on the emotional aspects of connectivism. How would you do that with your students, in a way that keeps both you and your student’s safe?”
I believe that if you communicate frequently with your students, deliver prompt feedback and keep a netiquette code in your course, you and your students would be safer than if you leave them wandering around on their own. To do that you will need a bunch of trained moderators. Sometimes it’s not possible because there is no money to pay them but you can have willing connections within your network that will do the job on voluntary basis. It’s easier said than done, you need to have a strong tie with your moderators and be sure that if they need to abandon they will place at least someone to cover their position.
While Sia Vogel writes about her feelings in Being there and suddenly very lonely. I think that if CCK08 course had spared a week for introductions, as again my dear Webheads usually do in their EVO workshops (sorry for being so redundant), we could have acquired a sense of belonging and then move to the content itself with more ease and a sense of recognition. I see clearly that my views regarding online learning and teaching may be biased, I believe that if you set a friendly and warm tone with participants it’s easier to get them focused on the content.
Regarding emotions, as a private email points out and Frances comments: “The emotional aspects are important but can be difficult to discuss 'in public'. I noticed that Stephen D had praised someone sharing their grade as 'living the spirit of connectivism'. What is the place of private discussion in networks? Important to me.”
While I a agree with Ed, on that “we should be open to sharing and discussing our emotional insights”
In the case of my last post the valuable thing for me was to bring emotions to the table but… Will others consider it valuable?, Are we willing to discuss our emotions openly?, Does dealing openly with participant’s emotions really promotes learning? The netiquette suggest to deal with flame messages by private email, is this the only way?, If we do it in private how will the rest learn about it? Emotions are important for connections but how and where do we deal with them in a network?. I bet some research been done on this, could any of you share links on the subject?
My contact with Andy Pincon from Digital Workforce Education Society or Digibridge was triggered by a final comment I posted at BaW07. He contacted me by email, I told him that it was an incredible coincidence that he saw me because I had been learning with Mercedes (the voice in the video) about his long distance Chicago project with immigrants . As part of Mercedes’ workshop I trained for free a digitally illiterate adult to learn basic computer skills like turning on the PC, use of mouse, use of keyboard, etc., using Alado as virtual classroom. The student was in another place of town with a moderator by his side listening to me and following tutorials. By the way, the Mexican organization linked to Digibridge is Innovative Soft.
For me the process described above shows that, as George Siemens mentions again in this Instructional Design week, all learning starts with a connection and that attributes of connections influence knowledge. By talking, visiting sites, exploring web 2.0 platforms, asking questions, interacting with them and their experiences I decided to leave BaeL at 21st Classes inactive, to create BaeL at Ning as virtual support community and designed a short four weeks online workshop using AprendeLibre computer tutorials as content material, Yahoo Messenger as live sessions site and BaeL-PC Yahoo Group as forum and mailing list. The workshop was launched the 24th of March 2008.
It was a free activity, not related to school in any way. My students and I were working from Cyber Places which created difficulties due to the “strange” sites I required access to. The target group age range was 14 to 18 years old, some of them worked and studied, some went to school in the morning while others went in the afternoon, non of them spoke English, the older ones used the computer to chat, the e-mail to send PPP presentations and had Metroflogs to post images. Some of us did not know how to use a computer properly. The sites are still active, the last member is a young single mum who wants to learn to use computer programs to get a job as a secretary or receptionist. I am glad to help and continue learning with her participation.
Yesterday I got my modem back. It burned last Monday morning so most of week 5 I was off line, I joined two live sessions and missed my weekly meetings. However, I was not disconnected, I kept thinking about the course, tried to link more concepts and explored my wall. This is a late post, I will address here the specific questions required for this week: Have you begun to see the rudiments of a learning network forming?, Has some of the conceptual uncertainty settled?
"groups and networks cannot be compared, groups are a type of network, they are not something altogether different from networks so, in a sense, it's almost impossible to compare the two because they are the same".So, taking into account the three critical elements he mentions: Agent Autonomy, Complexity and Task Specialization, the picture changes. I could say that the type of network that we have in the "course" is one that has a high level of autonomy (we have to archive a focused outcome but we can organize ourselves to do so), a high level of complexity is not required (the task can be managed loosely, they are not concerned about what the final outcome could be) and the task at hand does not require high levels of specialization (no one will be killed if we get it wrong).
Regarding the second question. I have had my share of conceptual uncertainty, I cannot say that the uncertainty has gone because I find more with every new subject. This is not a bad thing, I am enjoying expanding my contacts, I am learning to get ready to launch my BaeL digital literacy project as shown in this video but we need to get on board a charity organization to do so. We started in March so it has been a long road.
Today I was at the SL CCK08 group for the first time, the meeting ended quickly and I stayed around with Louise for a nice cosy chat. It's a pity that they do not use voice in order to document the meetings; I find it sad, like a waste of resources, I connect better with voice and get tired of typing :-) 
Talking to her I saw that I have now a network at Twitter, before I followed just my friends and now I am following people I hardly know. 
Later on I invited Dolores to my launchroom. We were talking about the course, our questions and the way we are engaging, I will meet her again at Conenctivitas tomorrow at 13:00 SLT 20:00 GMT. 
