My comments to paper 1 feedback

I am sharing the comments and mark given by G. Siemens as some other participants have done. If you want to read the file sent to me an hour ago please feel free to do so here.

The comments I sent by email are the following:

Hi George and Steven!

I just received your email with your mark and comments on my first paper, thanks.

To answer your comments I will quote you first to address them later.

“Some statements – such as “engage or enrage” aren’t cited or supported. I believe it’s a Prensky quote, but I don’t understand what it means.”

I thought that by posting in my paper the video itself, that would do as citation for the phrase "I strive to engage my students, not to enrage them."  You are right, it’s from Prensky. Here is the citation and link to the video: "Prensky, M. (2004) What Can You Learn From A Cell Phone?". With all due respect, to get the meaning please watch the video.  As your connectivist model states, I could go on with a series of explanations but if you don’t recognize the pattern it would be of little use.

“The focus of this paper was for you to state your position on connectivism – strengths/weaknesses, etc. You provide a series of personal reflections rather than stating clearly your view of connectivism. If you provided the latter, then you can use your reflections to strengthen your overall argument.”

In my paper I stated that my position was ambivalent, it was too early for me to view the strengths/weaknesses, etc. Even now, it’s difficult to explain clearly with words my views about something that cannot be defined but rather lived to grasp it.

If you read my blog and follow the links to my activities you will see that online and offline I work and relate to others in a “connectivist” way. I experienced connectivism before I met the term, it’s a way of living and working that I started since 1993. I had to leave teaching institutions to accomplish that, formal education is still traditional and curriculum centred.

Online I experienced it with the EVO sessions. The difference between your course and those workshops is the frequent feedback, encouragement and warm, free atmosphere. In a sense, I'm immersed in connectivism; my actions define my position. Sorry if I cannot clarify it more that this.

Design. Following my heart.

I understand that many people don’t agree with the way I do things, online and offline. I learn by doing. I saw a learning opportunity that could be shared and beneficial... I followed my heart. In this post I will describe the background story behind the creation of BaeL project and the instructional design issues that, with my interactions on the CCK08 course, I see now.

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.

The following year, at BaW08, I mentioned in the mailing list that I wanted to practice what I had learned, I did not want to spend another year away from online teaching and that I would get a group of students to do so. Sharon Betts suggested me to connect my students to hers at TLG, Andy Pincon suggested me to contact Unete and to consider LearnFree programs. Bernice La Lucerne, Jose Antonio Da Silva, Ronaldo Lima, Nergiz Kern and Dennis Oliver’s generous ideas and questions about the issues I was considering, helped me to decide how to go about it.

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 21^st 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.

According to Renata Phelps’ paper, I designed a complex non linear learning environment. If I had read George’s Learning Development Cycle or watched his presentation on Instructional Design and Connectivism maybe I would have done things differently. I say “maybe” because the Context, Readiness, Tools, Equipment Available and Resources were the Impacting Factors to plan the design of the workshop.

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.

The trip to my hometown was… different! I lost the 10 AM bus, took the next at 2:00 PM, trying to fix SLExperiments wiki. The movie I saw on the bus was “The Count of Montecristo” I ate my lunch and drank my soda… different. The last scene of the movie shows the hero’s core network; in my mind I saw a picture of my core network and started crying softly. This course is having deep emotional impact on me.  But that’s another story.

Peace During Chaos Week?

I commented in Jenny's post about Complexity-Chaos:

"as soon as I placed my wall out there in my week 5 post it became real and I could start tearing it down. I expected more uncertainty this week just from the subject “Chaos and Complexity” and I found instead, to my surprise, peace".

"In this experiment we were plunged in to chaos in order to live connectivism , there is no other way to understand it, we have to live it."

I won't try to explain how I got from chaos to peace. I saw so many  patterns this week that it would be messy.

My post was featured in the Daily in a very clever way. That fact itself triggered something that took me back to my reaction to the first of Jenny's posts I read. The comments left in my blog opened doors, the October 15th  morning live session had a deep impact on me, I kept listening and typing my ideas. I copied the entire chat and spend hours  in a notepad file I called "provoking comments" (copy/paste), making more sense moving reactions along  until I saw a distinct pattern.  Then, if I remember well, I left comments in Iamar's post and Gina's post among others that right now I don't recall but with each visit the wall started to crumble. My reactions  flowed easily in the comments area.

It became clear for me that my reaction to finding Jenny as a person that I resonate with was crucial. In my first comment to her I told her: "When I joined the course I wanted to learn about Connectivism, it seems that I am living it, that’s what this experiment is about." 

Then I saw that indeed, there is a vicarious reinforcement pattern in the lack of comments and that somehow Gina was perceiving it too, she touched the same feeling of being ushered to behave in certain ways in order to have access to information and she called that "FILTERS".  I also realized that there is nothing wrong with that.  On Friday's live Ustream session almost everything fell into place. As Stephen mentioned

"TRY TO FIND PATTERNS AND RECOGNIZE THEM, IF IT'S NOT RECOGNIZED YOU REACT IN A KIND OF AUTISTIC  WAY." "LEARNING AND KNOWING IS PATTERN RECOGNITION, YOU CANNOT TELL PEOPLE, THEY HAVE TO LIVE IT, EITHER THEY RECOGNIZE IT OR NOT".

I saw clearly how clever both are designing an experiment that would lead you to live connectivism. You live it in such a way that the concept cannot be described with words.

Moreover, today at our SLExperiments Weekly meeting an non expected of event happened.  I had two new members lost in-world, one contacting me on Twhirl and we did not know her SL name and another one with SL IMs who missed the teleports sent.

As soon as I told the group I saw a fantastic display of resources from all the members, email, twitter, SIM, wikipages, IMs, Google Groups, etc.  As Dave White explains in his video about Multivisual Environments for Online Distance learning (Second Life for example),  Aspects of Community.  There were some shades of Confusion, Performance, Drama, Frustration and Celebration. We thought each other, there was a feeling of belonging, the lost members felt cared for, there was a natural engagement, high level of trust and persistence to complete the task at hand.
That is a true learning community, I am very proud to belong to it and I celebrate myself for having started those meetings. I wonder if we will celebrate 10 years as Webheads did.

Reading Collectives, Networks and Groups in Social Software for E-Learning I saw that what I have done so far at Becoming an e-Learner site, considering my lack of experience, it's not so bad, with time practice and connective participation it will become better.  It's plain chaos.

The rigid but reliable BaeL Yahoo Group appealed to teachers but not to the teenagers.  Also, they are used to MSN chat, the moving icons tug at them in a fantastic way but as I had seen that that environment does not hold more than 70 people using voice and I wanted them to speak I choose YH Messenger: Huge mistake.  After exploring several venues, mainly opening sites and showing them to the kids of the block I chose Ning.  It appealed to them, so I started my long boring still unfinished task of translating the platform which is still in Spanglish.  Well, it is bilingual! LOL

In conclusion, I have found that human contact, affection and caring are very important to develop a learning network. I am eager to know how these guys sort out the point of assessment, evaluation or whatever you wan to call it.

By the way, I have not seen, received and email, a tweet or something to tell me about the grading of my first paper.  

Never mind,  maybe in Connectivism the responsibility to hand out grades doesn't fall on the "teacher's" shoulders.  Who knows? Maybe it will arrive by regular email like my subscription.  Surely I will know any time in 2009.

Well, off to SLP.  I miss the place dearly.  Long walks on broad clean sidewalks looking at grandiose colonial houses, endless pedestrian narrow streets leading every two blocks to a plaza with a church, fountains and gardens. No rain!!  Warm weather, warm people, f2f kisses, hugs and laughter.  Great celebration among a blood group... FAMILY!!  :-)

Connected without modem?

Before going any further let me tell you that I just installed Snap Shots. I have found it handy in other blogs. Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

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?

While Lisa does not recall conceptual uncertainty she mentions the grading system. I was only aware of the 40% assigned to the papers and learned the rest from her post. You know? I am not concerned with the grades, I joined to learn, have feedback and to get my efforts documented somehow.

I saw a network forming from the beginning, a huge one with more that 2250 participants. Following Stephen's ideas on Groups vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues,which for me are kind of rigid or don't leave much room, I could say that we have somewhat a learning network. It has the following attributes: diversity, openness, distribution, interaction, it changes and the topics are emergent. What I see in conflict is the autonomy attribute as described, we are not autonomous, we have guidelines, tasks and readings assigned, live meetings to attend and formal leaders. In fact, part of this post is "homework".

On the other hand, looking at George's Groups and Networks presentation which I find flexible and gives more room I could say that what we have is a learning network with a high level of autonomy. It is important to note that he considers, as stated in the first slide that:

"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).

We come back again to the importance of context. Being aware of the two points of view I can say that I see a learning network forming, not only the rudiments. There is huge amount of work to get this going and a lot of effort to plan this "course", design the network and set it flying. I am not overlooking that. What comes clear, from the educational point of view, is that depending on the objectives of your course you need to decide which type of environment is more suitable, a traditional group where you have more control or a network when you can afford low control.

To give a course using this learning model sounds attractive to you?, Are we willing to pay the price?, Is your student's criteria solid enough to achieve something in a network?, Is the subject fit to be learned connectivelly? Is your school or organization willing to support you on a learning network adventure?, Is your country technically equipped to use web 2.0 tools?, Are your students digitally literate to cope? There are many factors to consider.

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.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I have been thinking about my wall. I still laugh when I remember the image "You are not longer subscribed to anything" at Stephen's blog. Well, my wall is related to trust. George's presentation touches a bit this point.
I do not know how to relate to someone that I hardly know, to someone who interacts very little with me, I tend to doubt when facing closed people with no chance to talk to them. It may be silly but if don't place the wall out it will be harder to tear it down. I know we are not supposed to get validation or recognition, that's what my head says.
However, my emotion reacts, I am human. I have seen some behaviourism taking place in the feedback or lack of feedback given, I perceive some kind of light coercion going on, not in a direct way. It is in a vicarious way, I ignore your behavior and acknowledge the behaviour that I consider right for you to imitate.
Let me explain myself, I feel kind of forced to post in a certain way in order to receive feedback, no one has sent an email or left a comment here saying something like "your posts lack focus" or "your map is not linked" or something of the sort. I observe a distinct pattern in the posts that do receive feedback so it's kind of a behavioural pattern. Well, the wall is out. I hope this helps.

My concept map is still very similar to the first I posted, I have the elements, the concepts, disconnected except in some parts. As soon as I see some sense in it I will post it. The YH Group for credit learners is picking up slowly, not all the credit learners have joined. The survey to get information to plan live meetings has even fewer quorum. We are all fighting to get time to do things, I know that people with very limited time prefer to hang at Moodle and be visible there.

As I luckily can manage my time, I can afford to have live meetings several times in the week. 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.

I am glad my modem is back!

Diving board and an empty pool. Week 5.

I thought I had started the week on the right foot. I did the readings and audio files for the week on Sunday, I also prepared the images and links for this posts which was planned to be released on Monday afternoon. I printed “That Group Feeling”, read some blogs, left comments, started answering at Moodle and WOA! The no break started making unusual fast beeps in the middle of a message to Carlos! I had barely time to post my answer to him, sorry Carlos I did not say goodbye, and turn off the PC. Unfortunately, the modem ended up fried due to the high variations on voltage and the telephone company promised to come to check it today or tomorrow.

Nevertheless, I am posting my diving board for week 5 at a cyber place and hope to use it from here because the Internet pool at home is empty. I decided not to reply to comments in my blog, I will go the owner of the comment's mblog and reply there, in that way I will learn more and probably connect better. I may be able to come on Friday for the live session. I will reflect on dry land :-)

To leave a comment at Stephen’s post “Groups vs Networks: The class struggle continues.” I was prompted to subscribe, which I did. The following image showed up and I started laughing. I though this was Stephen’s doing, a way to say that there are not walls at his site, but later I understood that probably I had done something wrong.



My comment there was:

Hi Stephen!
It took me a long time to stop laughing after I registered, it took a screenshot of the image, I thought it was your doing but maybe it isn't, I'll post the screenshot in my blog.
Well, I enjoyed your rambling. I believe I understood what you mean, I will see the
presentation as well just to kick the wall. I guess there is a wall that's preventing me from understanding your concepts, I suspect what is it, I want to work it out. While I know very well which are my groups I am not sure which is my network or if I have one. As you mention, the two concepts are fused in my mind, rather, the concept of a network is new for me. I sense I am developing one right now with the connections of CCK08. Some of the people I contacted during the 1st week have a period of more than 15 of without logging in at Moodle, some have posted in their blogs and some appears to have vanished, that network is evolving; few people of my groups have joined the course but we don`t talk about it in our gatherings which comes as a break because I have been spending too many hours engaged in it.
See you around. Love: Maru

I found that placing the items to read and assimilate in my blog helps me a lot, so here it is this week's slideshow

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In the following video you can see Stephen in action explaining this chart: