Connectivism

On Friday 3rd April, I had the pleasure of coordinating a seminar given by Stephen Downes who presented a talk entitled, 'Connectivism and the Personal Learning Environment'.

I also had the pleasure of meeting John Larkin who has blogged about the experience already and I also met an enthusiastic follower of Stephen Downes named Sui Fai John Mak who teaches logistics at the Sydney Institute and who has set up a community on Ning about Connectivism. John was one of the 2200 students that participated in a course run by Stephen and George Siemens last fall. The details of this course was included in the presentation as well as the theory of connectivism. One of the best descriptors I've seen of connectivism is in this video set up by Wendy Drexler.

Of course I was first introduced to Connectivism by Darcy Moore.

So now that I've acknowledged all these sources, I can get on with explaining my thoughts on the presentation. It was particularly relevant for tertiary teachers as Stephen explained how he and George had set up an open course for anyone who wanted to participate. The many technologies employed were an eye-opener and has made me consider how best I might integrate more technologies in to the subjects I currently teach. It has made me think of the importance that connections make in the sense of developing one's personal learning environment and network. One of the limitations I thought I had was the large number of students (c. 200), but now this seems to no longer to be a constraint. More to come ...