Account of Stephen Downs visit to Second Spain

Stephen Downes very kindly agreed to guest a conference about Networks within organizations in  Second Spain.  The SIM was unstable, the participants that arrived on time had no problems with sound but  some of the latecomers could not hear him or my translation.  His talk ended and the round of questions was held on the text chat expecting to reach everyone in the room.  People were eager to ask and get answers so they put up with the unexpected heavy text chat while Stephen very patiently waited until I typed the translation to continue.

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!

What's the role of a connectivist teacher?

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.

Community Management Presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: 2007 fsoss)