Connectivism & Connective Knowledge

Spiraling innovation is one of the most valuable aspects of participating in an open online spaces. When someone experiments and innovates in a transparent manner, we are able to learn more than simply the content. Observers learn the process and method of innovation in design and delivery of learning materials. In putting together this online course, we are fortunate to draw from the work of passionate educators.

Over the last year, the LTC has offered several open online conferences – Online Connectivism and Future of Education…as well as Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations offered with Techempower, Complexive, Duke Corporate Ed and others. These conferences really opened my eyes to the value of transparency in learning. Individuals organized Second Life tours, informal live discussions, blogged reactions to presentations, contributed to conference proceedings through tags (which we aggregated into Pageflakes), attendr maps, summarized presentations in wikis, etc. In organizing these conferences, I found the work of K-12 Online and Webheads in Action inspirational for guidance. It’s much easier to innovate and add new ideas to the work of others than to start from scratch. I’d actually go a bit further and say that most ideas these days are aggregations of others, with each new individual/organization adding a small twist to the innovation spiral. Nothing is wholly new anymore. Openness equals innovation.

Additional inspiration for a large scale open online course came from observing David Wiley’s Intro to Open Education last fall. While I’m sure other initiatives of this sort existed before David’s course, his was the first I observed and paid attention to. The work of this course has popped up in other open education courses and contributed to a general raised awareness of the key concepts of the movement. Openness equals impact.

Alec Couros’ EC&I 831 course delivered earlier this year was another important source of insight. Alec modeled and fostered “hyper experimentation”. He had (what appeared to me) high expectations of his learners and their ability to use and apply technology. Blogs, wikis, twitter, voicethread, and numerous other tools were used during the course. He also brought in numerous guest speakers to enlarge and extend the subject matter theme. I peripherally observed learner comments through course blogs. Most educators only dream of providing as motivating and eye-opening experience as Alec provided to his learners. The course was also available online where non-course participants could attend lectures (via ustream) and contribute to the conversation. Openness equals engagement and experimentation.

As we begin planning our fall course, I’d like to begin by saying thanks to the many innovators – K-12 online, Webheads, David Wiley, and Alec Couros and others – that have started foraging new paths of teaching and learning. With this course, and many others that will follow by other educators, I hope to extend and build on their work!