Networks are everywhere, says Lazlo Barabasi. And everyone agree now on this. And learning theory and pedagogy would not ignore the chance of participating in this hip. Connectivism is its name. Learning as a connective phenomenon. Knowledge as a distributed character.  A participatory pedagogy that engages in co-creating.

Nodes and links are basic elements of networks, in its most infant epistemology stage. As in classical netownian physics, compared to relativistic or quantum physics. The separation we need to make between nodes and links is convenient, but it hides a more nonlinear and complex phenomenon. Links and nodes should be considered as parts of same entity. Like irregular membranes. In the meanwhile, let’s use what we have and understand: networks. And lets us them to push the knowledge of knowledge and learn on learning a bit.

See you next week.

CCK08 – Final Project. Conectivismo: una visión de la tecnología en la educación.

Por Jorge Crom

En las últimas 12 semanas he participado de una experiencia educativa única de la Universidad de Manitoba en Canadá donde se ha explorando el impacto transformador de la tecnología en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje en las últimas décadas y los cambios y reformas que la educación pudiere estar reclamando ante la irrupción de las nuevas tecnologías. El concepto central es Conectivismo, un nuevo marco conceptual del conocimiento y el aprendizaje que emerge de la construcción y la navegación de las redes de conocimiento. Al nivel neuronal, conceptual y social, las redes manifiestan de manera fractal su carácter conectivo en un ambiente complejo y distribuido de cognición.

El curso realizado por Internet fue conducido por George Siemens y Stephen Downes, dos especialistas en educación haciendo uso de un gran conjunto de herramientas en línea para compartir textos, audios y videos y colaborar haciendo uso de plataformas abiertas y gratuitas de educación a distancia (Moodle, wiki), redes sociales (Facebook, Twitter, Flikr, Google Groups, LinkedIn, Ning), aplicativos de capacitación y participación (elluminate, UStream, Articulate, slideshare, Wordl), indexadores y alertas (Google Alerts, Pageflakes, delicous, RSS, Google Reader, Technorati, diig), blogs (WordPress, Blogger),  redes de comunicación ( mails, Skype), mapas mentales y conceptuales (Cmap), video (YouTube, blip.tv) hasta ambientes virtuales como Second Life. Pero el elemento más sorprendente del curso es haber podido dar un ambiente de participación activa y polémica a 2400 alumnos de todo el mundo en los que se da en llamar un Curso Masivo Abierto en Linea (CMAL). 

En una nueva cultura participatoria apalancada por la Web 2.0 las redes sociales estimulan la expresión, la colaboración, la circulación de información y la permite novedosas formas afiliación que a su vez reclaman nuevas habilidades en red y demandan un amplio acceso a tecnologías de información y conectividad a internet. La producción individual de contenidos, nueva formas de emergencia del poder de la gente a través de las tecnologías de Internet y la comunicación son sólo algunas de las características de la  época que sin duda permean también los ambientes educativos.

El Conectivismo puede ser interpretado como la teoría educativa que reconoce que el aprendizaje como la habilidad de armar y transitar redes de conocimiento. Desde esta perspectiva,  el conocimiento es ENREDADO y está distribuido en espacios complejos y dinámicos en abundancia apalancado por la tecnología que replica fractalmente en la sociedad y a nivel individual la misma estructura de conectividad que se da a nivel cerebral.

REDES, REDES,  REDES.

El cerebro responde a las demandas ambientales, generando, creando,  fortaleciendo, debilitando y hasta  perdiendo conexiones neuronales. La mente resulta una construcción distribuida desde el cerebro hacia el exterior donde la plasticidad es su característica básica. Cuándo algo impacta esta red, las conexiones de la red cambian resultando en el almacenamiento de información. El  aprendizaje resulta de la integración de toda la información percibida y procesada que deja una traza física en su pasaje, generando nuevos patrones de organización en la red.

En los últimos años psicólogos, biólogos, matemáticos, físicos y científicos de diversos campos han compartido sus observaciones y construido un nuevo espacio epistemológico llamado la Nueva Ciencia de las Redes. Una nueva perspectiva teórica que por ejemplo está proveyendo a los médicos herramientas para enfrentar su batalla contra las epidemias, a los ingenieros a prevenir fallas en cascadas en los grandes sistemas eléctricos interconectados y a los analistas económicos a anticipar catástrofes financieras. Nodos, enlaces, estabilidad, sincronicidad, autosimilaridad, niveles, cascadas, epidemias, emergencia, resiliencia, fases, conectores, evolución, agrupamiento son algunas de las nuevas maneras de ver y pensar el mundo. Un mundo que conecta muy diversos fenómenos, entidades y realidades.

El descubrimiento de estos patrones ocultos muestra gran regularidad en el Universo. La estructura interna de Internet, la vinculación  a través de enlaces de la red de documentos que constituyen la Web, la interacción de la gente en redes sociales son una sorprendente replicación de propiedades locales o acciones individuales que resultan en interacciones colectivas emergentes. La realidad también se manifiesta como intrincadas redes.

REDES Y ECOLOGIAS

La educación es compleja para ser confinada o reducida a un modelo mecanicista. Las metáforas de las redes y las ecologías como modelos de aprendizaje, conocimiento y gestión de la complejidad sirven mejor para entender los espacios donde ocurre el aprendizaje. Redes y ecologías son entonces, maneras de reflejar el caos y la complejidad de los ambientes educativos. Nos permiten reemplazar el modelo jerárquico actual de la enseñanza y explicar la emergencia de sentido y entendimiento de los alumnos, la formación de grupos,  las dinámicas de participación, el avance de una disciplina o hacer diseño curricular teniendo en consideración contenidos, contexto y conexiones. La figura central del experto se difunde como parte de una red social y se permite la diversidad de caminos que un alumno puede recorrer en su busqueda de sentido.

El Conectivismo se hace evidente en la educación no formal y en  la autoeducación donde el aprendizaje se desarrolla a partir de estrategias de autoenseñanza y se convierte en un desafío a la educación formal.  Cuando la curricular, la administración y los procesos de evaluación se diluyen, quedan las conexiones que hacemos a nivel conceptual y social en una experiencia de aprendizaje conectivo.

Las redes generan sus propias fronteras de excepciones, confidencialidad y lealtad, que se mantienen y renegocian continuamente. Las redes sociales son principalmente redes de comunicación que involucran lenguaje simbólico, restricciones culturales y relaciones de poder, Cada comunicación crea pensamientos y sentidos, que a su vez dan lugar a otras comunicaciones y así la  red se autoestimula como sistema social viviente. Ideas,  valores, creencias y otras formas de conocimiento constituyen estructuras de significado. Los textos, las obras de artes, la tecnología y los bienes materiales se crean con propósito convirtiéndose en la materialización de sentido compartido, generado por las redes de la sociedad.

Las redes emergen como una nueva forma de organización de la actividad humana. Internet se convierte así en una infraestructura crítica de la vida cotidiana que facilita la comunicación entre la gente y el acceso a información, servicios y recursos. Las redes parecen ser la forma organización de la vida, incluyendo las redes sociales donde la autonomía,  la diversidad,  la apertura y la interactividad son las propiedades fundamentales de las buenas redes. Aquellas redes donde se promueven estos valores son robustas, estables y confiables y se constituyen en una de las principales formas de organización social a nivel local y global luego de las tribus,  las jerarquías y los mercados.

REDES Y EDUACION

No hay dudas que las prácticas educativas están siendo influenciadas por Internet, la Web 2.0 y otras tecnologías de la información y la comunicación. El rol central del maestro está siendo desafiado al igual que las estructuras educativas. Los alumnos practican sus propias búsquedas,  exploran y descubren, creando información y conocimiento participando y apropiándose de nuevas herramientas, tecnologías y redes.

En este contexto, nos cabe preguntarnos cuál es el nuevo rol de educador. Sin duda, facilitará el tránsito hacia nuevas pedagogías promover en los educadores un mayor foco en las redes, reconociendo sus estructuras y dinámicas y navegándolas convirtiéndolos en campeones de la conexión de conceptos, personas, organizaciones y redes, gestionando a su vez sus propias redes personales que les permitan promover la capacidad en red de los alumnos. Es un futuro desafiante para la educación. Mientras tanto, podremos seguir presenciando alumnos que sobrepasan las capacidades en red de sus tutores, lo cual refuerza la urgente necesidad de un cambio de perspectiva hacia el conectivismo.

A su vez, la apertura y gratuidad de diversas ofertas educativas disponibles  desafían y compiten con las organizaciones educativas tradicionales. La apertura y acceso a diseños curriculares, las herramientas de software gratuitas, los repositorios de contenidos de libre acceso y los cursos abiertos son sólo las primeras manifestaciones de este nuevo paradigma de apertura de la educación a nivel global. Estas tendencias impactan en los espacios y estructuras educativas que reclaman repensar el aula, los cursos y los programas. La educación tradicional está definida por los propios límites del aula, la jerarquía organizacional y esquemas mentales ligados a información y contenidos. Pero nuestra habilidad a aprender crece y se adapta a un nuevo ambiente donde el espacio de aprendizaje es la  ecología que promueve y soporta la formación de comunidades de participación y las estructuras de aprendizaje son las redes que vehiculizan y confinan la creación de procesos educativos, enseñanza y aprendizaje.

En los años 70 Paulo Freire llamaba a una reforma basada en el cambio de poder de las estructuras de la sociedad e Ivan Illich fundaba su motivación para una reforma en los altos costos de la educación y la inhabilidad del sistema existente en escalar y dar satisfacción a los nuevos desafíos. Una nueva pedagogía de la participación requiere el reconocimiento del rol activo del estudiante y su interacción con nuevas herramientas multimedia cada vez más presentes e invisibles, ubicuas y siempre en conectadas.

En el pasado el lenguaje y  los textos ofrecían beneficios fundamentales para los procesos del pensar y del aprendizaje. Ahora, pensar, aprender y conocer deben ser concebidos como actividades distribuidas a través de la mente, el cuerpo y la  comunidad. ¿Cuánto de esto está  presente en nuestra pedagogía actual? ¿Cuál es la pedagogía a construir frente a estos desafíos? Las redes importan porque son la matriz que subyace en nuestras vidas. Queda por  seguir investigando si es la estructura y dinámica de las redes lo que hace posible el conocimiento. Un mundo que necesita aprender a pensar en red.

This is the final concept map briefing the 12 weeks Conncectivism and Connectiv Knowledge main concepts.

Chinese do not have a word for crisis. Crisis is written using two ideograms: risk and opportunity.

Is education facing a crisis? If education means challenge and change, education will always be in crisis. Let’s face education as paradigm of permanent risk and opportunities.

The kind of crisis that Education is facing now is leveraged by technology. A new theory of knowledge and learning emerges out of the construction and navigation of knowledge networks: Connectivsm. Networks manifest its connecting character allowing the flow of distributed knowledge. Based on networks structure in a complex changing environment and distributed cognition a new paradigm emerges claiming deep changes at the fundamental basis of the theoretical and practice of the education building.

We have huge amount of evidence of the impact of technology at all levels in human society. We assist at signs of this crisis manifested in a generational divide. Or should we say that technology is deepening the generational divide? In the classroom this is quite evident. The practice exercised by learners around technology is completely different from that of the teachers.  Resistance and conservatism is the answer of many teachers to the presence of technology in the classroom. Would teachers be able to catch up their pupils overcoming the divide? In many cases this may be solved through intensive technology literacy training. But in some other cases, the divide is that. Like the rivers, they flow to different oceans.

We read this divide in the way that the space in the classroom is articulated. The central position of the teacher is a barrier to allow the pupils to develop their networks. But it is not only the teachers who are acting the resistance. The educational organization expresses the paradigm of conservatism as well as the curricula. He have seen some curricula being updated, but the pedagogy stays the same.

Considering this panorama, connectivism and connective knowledge will have better chances of unveiling all its potential in non formal education, postgraduate studies and new pedagogies experiences. It will take some time till connectivism will be seen not as thread to traditional education. Points of resistance will not be neutralized through the introduction of technology. On the contrary, it will deepen the crisis. Connectivism will has its opportunities as social networks of teachers and pupils will interconnect in a complex manner. Going back to the Japanese culture, they have recognized that the softer the elements are, the harder to change them. It is easier to change a technology. It is very difficult to change a culture.

The following question Will connectivism be able to produce the learning required to meet the complex challenges facing the future? should be re-estated. It is not a matter of connectivism. Connectivism will make evident the need of using the network and complexitiy metaphors in order to find a path to produce the changes that the future is claiming. The educational organizations will have the chance to react,  and some will demonstrate that there is a new way of allowing to learn. A more centreless education with more protagonist pupils.

In order to answer the questions on the future of Connectivism and Connectivism Knowledge, some vision of possible futures may help.

Futurelab, a UK not-for-profit organization committed to research on change on education policies and practices, in its document 2020 and beyond: Future scenarios for education in the age of new technologies  tries to build a vision for personalized learning facing year 2020. The report proposes five key areas in the field of digital technology of potential interest to educators:

1. Personal devices. Technology will be invisible embedded and distributed in most objects. Audio communicators, visual displays and communications devices and other sensors will be embedded in  keys, clothes, shoes, notebooks and newspapers.

2. Intelligent environments. The environment will adapt to the individual and connect and know everything about him.

3. Computing infrastructure. A blanket wireless connectivity to the network for relationships between users and software for complex simulations and experiments with infinite storage capacity.

4. Security. Access to all of your embedded devices, interactions with intelligent environments and connections to the network.

5. Interfaces. Interactions will be with things and people and not with machines, screens and keyboards.

In summary, interaction with digital technologies will be more pervasive, seamless and invisible enabling ongoing interactions with people, buildings and materials and with a constantly connected network with unimaginable computing power and reliable storage capacity to interact more with more intelligent (and responsive) technologies to use simulation and visualization tools to solve problems, experience alternative realities and prepare for new experiences.

In the past language and text offered fundamental benefits for thinking and learning processes. Now, thinking, learning and knowledge may be conceived as a distributed activity across mind, body, community and digital resources. How much of what is our present pedagogy artifact is based on the constellations of community and resources available? What is the pedagogy to be built facing this networked vision? Let’s build it.

A learner-centered education is being driven by the development of social learning theory and the advancement of participatory web technologies. The information and communications technologies have influenced in three dimensions:

·         our ability to create and share information and content

·         our ability to connect and dialogue with others

·         our ability to experience a simulated reality

that leads to:

·         a diminishment of barriers to the creation of content and information and challenges the validation of information accuracy and  quality

·         the ability for conversations to occur, no longer confined by space and time

·         experience events previously unattainable for individuals to due to cost and access.

This is bringing challenges to traditional education:

Knowledge fluidity: Knowledge has become increasingly fluid.

Competition:  Border-less education, private for-profit and corporate universities

The ability to continue to learn and develop new knowledge replaces the importance of existing knowledge. The development of certain type of person with certain mindsets exceeds the importance of being in possession of a particular type of knowledge: becoming in contrast with knowing.

This trends and innovations impact on the spaces and structures of learning which claims to rethink classrooms, courses and programs. At the same time, new affordances arise. Societies and organizations generally value learning that occurs in traditional classroom models above other forms of learning. Yet learning occurs in many places, formats and process. Learning occurs also through games and simulation, mentoring and apprenticing, self-learning, communities of practice, personal learning networks, informal learning situations like conferences, reading, volunteering and hobbies, in summary: a broad-spectrum of learning situations.

Three concepts will form the foundations for reconsidering the spaces and structures of education:

1.       Long-term trends influencing information creation and structures of education;

2.       The nature of systemic change;

3.       The multi-faceted, dimension-less nature of learning.

Our ability to learn, grow and adapt to chance pressures is directly linked to the nature of our learning environments. But traditional education is defined by bounded classrooms and hierarchical organization and mindsets of information and content. So, a need for a different metaphor arises to guide learning design. Metaphors of learning ecology and learning network are suggested as encapsulating the needed shifts.

Ecology:               Can be viewed as an environment that fosters and supports the formation of communities and networks, the space of learning. Learning is seen as bounded, structured, managed by a single expert (the teacher) and occurring within the confines of a small group of peers. Information filtered in advance, by the educator and presented in a fairly coherent form defines the classroom. In contrast, the internet can be seen as an ecology of learning with different affordances, a hub of creative chaos.

Networks:           Can be viewed as the structures of learning. Networks arise in a space that both supports and confines their creation. This centrality of networks as an organizing scheme is also reflected in education, teaching and learning under the concept of connectivism. The distributed nature of knowledge and the growing complexification of all aspects of society require increased utilization of technology to assist our ability to stay current, manage information abundance and solve highly complex problems.

Thus, a call for a new pedagogy arises. In the 70’s Paulo Freire called for reform based on the changing power structures in society and Ivan Illich founded his motivation for systemic reform in the growing costs of education and the inability of the existing system to scale and meet new challenges. The reform calls of today are limited by lack of effort assigned to date on conceptualizing innovative and creative uses fo existing participatory technologies. A participatory pedagogy is one that does not fully define all curricular needs in advance of interacting with learners. Learners are able to contribute to existing curricula.

Education is concerned with the act of becoming. A highly connected and well educated populace appears to hold the greatest prospect for preparing individuals and societies to participate in the information and knowledge age.

·         Open courseware and content

·         Open software tools

·         Open material for e-learning capacity

·         Repositoires of learning objects

·         Free educational courses.

If we consider Open Education as freely available on non-commercial terms the different alternatives we have on sustainability of Open Education Resources (OERs) become critical. There are different models for funding Open Education:
Endowment model: the project is sustained from interest earned on managed funds to be previously obtained.

1.       Membership model: interested organizations are invited to contribute or subscribe.

2.       Donations model: supported by donations.

3.       Conversion model: giving something for free and convert later into a paying customer.

4.       Contributor-pay model: contributors pay the cost to make possible the provider to supply for free.

5.       Sponsorship model: sponsor explicitly contributes to get a return for its action.

6.       Institutional model: Institution pays as part of its mission.

7.       Governmental model: project is funded by government agencies.

8.       Partnerships and exchanges: the output of the exchange is an OER.

We should also take into account that the development and distribution of the OERs need to be accomplished. So, access, usability/reusability and quality are to be considered. Finally, the production of the resources requires a staff to complete the work, which in some case, but not in all, they make be staffed with volunteers, which also demand some level of organizations.

The concept of Open Education is widely considered here as a the capability of getting access, the possibility of having a conversation, individual networked centricity and dynamic self-determining educational paths, to mentions a few of them.

Be the Universal Access to Internet services and tools a change in paradigm which will bring a new level of literacy in Education?

Learning is complex to be confined or reduced to a mechanistic model. Instead, we use networks and ecologies as a model for learning. Networks and ecologies are a suitable replacement for the current classroom and hierarchical model of education. This complex environment we find in education explains the emergency of learners understanding, group formation, advancement of a discipline, etc.   

In learning we have individual parts, dynamic interaction, criticality of feedback in influencing adaptation and openness. Complexity provides a perspective on learning based on non-linearity of thought and variation as a source and outcome of thinking. Emergence is the outcome (understanding) that arises from different agents interacting and producing unanticipated outcomes. Emergence may manifest through collective self-organization, un-programmed functionality, interactive complexity or/and incompressible unfolding

For an autonomously developing system to acquire knowledge about a realistically complex environment, it must be able to interact extensively with that environment. Such interactions require very sophisticated sensors, which bring information into the system so that the system can test its understanding of the outside world. It requires speed and immediacy, ability to access a vast amount of information, demands user participation, mash ups, remixing and co-construction, capability to combine sources, cut, paste and edit on other peoples’ work, make cross referencing, manage the disappear of “the expert”, accept user generated content, mass participation and co-construction of ideas in a subject field fragmented and diverse, be able to participate, negotiate and personalize tools.

 In education the primary social object is content, but Education value lies not only in the content itself but the social interaction, which occurs around the content. Social networks are first and foremost networks of communications involving symbolic language, cultural constraints, relationship of power. Each communication creates thoughts and meaning, which give rise to further communications, and thus the entire network generates itself. Living social systems are self-generating networks of communications.

Social systems produce non-material structures.  Ideas, values, beliefs and other forms of knowledge generated by social systems constitute structures of meaning. These material structures – texts, works of art, technologies and material goods – are created for a purpose. They are embodiments of the shared meaning generated by the society’s networks of communications.

Autonomy, diversity, openness and interactivity are properties of good networks that make them robust, stable and reliable which configure them in the end as good knowledge engines  aligned with connective knowledge. Connectivism plays an important role in the development and emergence of new pedagogies, where control is shifting from the teacher to an increasingly more autonomous learner, an explorer. In this new environment, students will search, discover and create information and knowledge by participating and appropriating for themselves tools, technologies and networks.

So the question is, what are the changing roles for educators based on the connectivsm theory ? Educators should be at the same time community leaders, technology stewards and network weavers.

Complexity helps us to understand the multiple interactions of elements of a system that results in particular incomes. So, we should be able to design for adaptability, that is finding ways and patterns for sense making and achieve particular outcome through distributed approaches.

So, what are the roles to be played by an educator in learning complexity? The answer is that an educator should have the same capabilities we may ask to have to anyone that would navigate complexity.

It is not possible to manage a complex system, but to manage much of its environment: probe (explore, make sense, crating disruption o intervening), sense (see what happens with the structure), answer (reflect and design the new probe).

It is not possible to control networks, but to create connections, reinforce good connections, brake connections and reconnect.

Facing networks, what should be the new educator’s role?

1.    We should promote educators to make focus on networks, recognize its structure and dynamic and navigate them.

2.    Educator should become champions in linking concepts, people, networks and organizations.

3.    Educators should manage its own personal network to be able to foster people to be network capable.

It is a very challenging future, for education. In the meanwhile, students may be surpassing some of the networks capabilities of their tutors.  This reinforce the need of a urgent focus migration from content to networks.

References.

Conole, Gráinne. New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies.

Kop, Rita and Hill, Adrian.  Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?

McCarthy, Helen, Miller, Paul and  Skidmore, Paul (ed.). Network logic. Who governs in an interconnected world?

Phelps, Renata. Developing Online From Simplicity toward Complexity: Going with the Flow of Non-Linear Learning.

It is sure that the education practice is being influenced by Internet, web2.0 and other ITC tools. The center role of the teacher may be shifted towards a centreless education model. Same will happen with educational structures, organizations and administrations. Or, should we talk about a Network Centric Education (NCE)? In this new environment, students will search, discover and create information and knowledge by participating and appropriating for themselves tools, technologies and networks. Even at the concept level, the same structure and dynamic learned in networked environment will easily be replicated.

Nancy White, of  Full Circle Associates, identifies that the emerging roles and practices that this landscape brings could be described as follows:

So the question would be, what are the changing roles for educators based on the connectivsm theory?