Week Three: Networks

I never thought too much about networks even though the word pervades language and life. I have a home computer network and I tapped a professional network to get jobs completed. It was an interesting for me to learn some of basic network lingo this week. I hope those with more experience than I will forgive me for expressing basic concepts here. I feel I need to build this from the ground up. The resources I consulted most this week were George Seimens' Welcome video (which I am finding a very valuable resource every week), the PowerPoint slides and script from the Valdis Krebs' presentation on social and business networks, and Chapter 7 from Introduction to Social Network Methods (Robert A. Hanneman and Mark Riddle, 2005). All were provided on the course site.

Network Basics and Beyond
Networks are structures that connect one entity to another. Each entity is known as a "node" and the jumps between them is known as the "connection" or "connector." It is these three components that make up a network base. Without structure, nodes and connectors, a network does not exist. OK, that's simple enough, but that's where the simplicity in networks ends.

Seimens emphasized that networks are everywhere. We have family networks; travel networks, such as airlines; and the Internet which is a structure of networked computers. Krebs highlighted a ton of networks from the Simpsons to HIV/porn. I noticed that I began to see networks in new ways and in new places. For example, in addition to my "work" work and my work in this course, I've been really investigating the process by which I come by my food. I used to think of this in terms of a grocery and myself. OK, maybe if I really thought about it, I would add some farmer or processing plant somewhere. Little did I realize just how extensive the network of food has become! It includes migrant workers who plant seeds and pick cabbages. It reaches across the oceans to factories in China and India that not only process the food, but manufacture the packaging that encloses it. It reaches back millennium to the production of fossil fuels that fuel the shipping vessels that transport both the unprocessed and processed foodstuffs and petrochemicals that keep down weeds and protect the harvest.

I was also introduced to some terms that expand on the concepts of basic network connections. Hubs are highly-connected nodes that are critical to the operation of an overall network. Powerlaws are certain people or products have a greater share of the power. Strong ties are those relationships among nodes that are very close. Weak ties are those that are not so close, but that doesn't mean they are not important. Weak ties can supply new sources of information and provide opportunity for access to different networks. Wow! This hit me hard as I realized that the strength of our networks is not necessarily in the quality (closeness) of our ties, but in the quantity of our ties. This is especially true if my strong ties are all connected to one another. Any information just goes round and round the circle. There's little new information introduced and the existing information gets stale quickly. Add a weak tie and suddenly there's a whole new world of information available! This has very personal ramifications for an introvert such as me. I tend to have my little group of friends with whom I connect with on a very regular basis. Hmmmm... I'll have to work on that.

Hanneman and Riddle add more insight to the relationships between nodes. Those nodes, or actors as they refer to them, who send out lots of information may be acting as communicators while those receiving a lot of information are known as "sinks", especially if they do not pass the information along. However, those who send more information than they are receiving are usually considered outsiders who are attempting to be influential, but may actually be "clueless." And those who receive little direct information are "out of the loop." (p. 7) Considering the source of information and the strength or weakness of the ties connected to that node may help to differentiate between what is likely to be true and what is baloney.

Kinds of Networks
Seimens also talked about the three different types of networks: neural, social, and conceptual. Neural networks like the way our brains work is the least researched, but most interesting to me. I watched A PBS show the other night about stress and the body. It showed pictures of neural cells from rats under lots of stress and those in a control group. The neurons of those under stress were much smaller than those in the control group. It would seem to me that those neurons would quite literally "lose touch" with some of their weak ties and perhaps be responsible for that loss of memory experienced while under stress, losing keys, checkbooks, and forgetting appointments.

At first, I didn't quite get the concept of conceptual networks (no pun intended). How can connecting two ideas or thoughts change the meaning of both? But, aha(!), Seimens gives the example of stars. Given the word "stars", we think of one thing - perhaps little white sparkly points of light or exploding gaseous globes in a dark sky. However, when we connect that word with the word "stripes" we get a whole new idea of stars - white, 5 pointed fabric shapes on a navy background over red and white stripes. One idea influences the other.

Social networks are most plentiful or at least most recognizable. I found I could relate most concepts of networks by overlaying them on a social network. I could understand weak ties and strong ties, hubs and nodes. Technology is certainly helping to create and maintain social networks at an increasing rate. I moved across the country 2 years ago, but have strengthened ties to several friends via technology. I've also been able to foster relationships that never would have flourished without technology.

I am an information sink!
One final passage that struck me this week is found in Hanneman and Riddle:

Imagine a group of 12 students in a seminar. It would not be difficult for each of the students to know each of the others fairly well, and build up exchange relationships (e.g. sharing reading notes). Now imagine a large lecture class of 300 students. It would be extremely difficult for any students to know all of the others, and it would be virtually impossible for there to be a single network for exchanging reading notes. Size is critical for the structure of social relations because of the limited resources and capacities that each actor has for building and maintaining ties. (p. 5)

That is this class. Over 2000 students and I haven't made one connection in three weeks. I AM an information sink! Or maybe with my work and personal responsibilities, I'm just an information sponge. Collecting the information of the network and gleaning what I can from it.

Week Two: The Nature of Knowledge

This week's focus was on the nature of knowledge which is always a weighty subject indeed. What is knowledge, how is it created and how is it stored or is it stored at all? It's been a while since I've contemplated some of these concepts and I found myself going back to review. However, incorporating some of the readings required me to make big changes in my former ideas about knowledge. This entry will try to merge my new and former ideas about knowledge.

In the welcome video for this week, George Seimens reminded me that information is the bits or building blocks of knowledge and that we externalize our bits of information to help knowledge grow. But information alone does not make up knowledge. All the facts and figures in the world doesn't make up a body of knowledge. Information is a way of expressing knowledge even though it's not knowledge itself. So, that makes one thing (information) that knowledge is not.

Is knowledge social?
In the article, Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge, Downes asks who "knows" how to make a 747 fly from London to Toronto. The simple answer is that no one person knows how. The knowledge to plan, manufacture, build, fly, navigate and land lies within many people, not one person. This is certainly an example of connective knowledge. Even if we externalized all the information needed to perform all these functions, no one person ever absorb all of it well enough to make a plane fly. There are some things one human could never do. As Downes concludes, it is only because we have this network of people who contain the total knowledge of making a plane fly that we can catch a flight from London to Toronto. However, there are lots of things that one human can learn to do by him or herself. I've attained the knowledge I need to cook, manage my expenses, and work effectively as an instructional designer. Of course, I don't claim to hold all the knowledge available for any of these tasks and one could argue that I need a whole network of people to do any of these. For example, in order to cook a meal I minimally need a farmer, someone to make the pots, pans, knives and other kitchen utensils, a stove maker, and so on right down to the guys that mine the gas for the stove. Without the specific knowledge of any one of these people, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for me to eat dinner tonight. Whether I like it or not, I am part of a very large and intricate social knowledge network.

Brain power
All the discussion the past two weeks about networking has me thinking once again about the mysteries of the brain. At least they are mysteries to me as I'm not a neuroscientist. How is what we call "knowledge" formed and stored in the brain? If I remember my A&P correctly, the brain is a complex network of neural connections through which electrical current flows in erratic patterns. There are no "storage" cells where memory could be filed away for future use. So from where do our memories come? If, as some scientists believe, memories are created when neurons re-fire certain pathways that were forged at the time an event happened, then the brain, as Downes ascertains is more like a computer in that it is a fluid social network rather than the stationary storage facility of bits and bytes that I had always envisioned it to be. Downes also says that,

...human thought amounts to patterns of interactions in neural networks. More precisely, patterns of phenomena - such as sensory perceptions - cause or create patterns of connections between neurons in the brain. These connections are associative - that is, connections between two neurons form when two neurons are active at the same time, and weaken when they are inactive or active at different times.

I have a feeling that these two concepts are more interrelated than just analogy. Is it coincidence that our organic and social systems work so similarly? Am I stretching this too far?

PLE's
The final concept I explored this week is PLE or personal learning environments. Most certainly, we in this course are creating our own PLE's. My own consists of this blog, the course wiki, the Facebook group, and the Eluminate sessions. I would bet that no one else in the course has exactly that combination. It's been fun exploring all the tools and figuring out which ones I can best utilize for my own learning.

Here's the question that's been buggering me all week: Web 2.0 learning may be great for those prepared for university life and instilled with a love of learning, but could developmental and non-traditional students, especially those at the community college level, benefit from these tools. Do they have the skills and abilities to create a PLE? If not, how can we best prepare them to reach toward that end? I fear overwhelming them with tools and techniques they are ill-equipped to handle.

Week One: Definitions, Learning Theory and Little Boxes

This week has been one of mass confusion as I try to get settled into the course and make sense of all the materials available to me. I've finally resigned to gleaning from the articles and perusing the posts to stimulate my thoughts about Connectivism and how it might apply to my life. The thoughts below are probably far too random to make much sense to anyone but myself, but here's goes nothing...

Little Boxes

I was inspired to look up the lyrics to Little Boxes which is a song from 1962 which I know I have never heard! At first, I thought that people in this song gathered themselves together in homogeneous groups possibly for the reason of insulating from others that are not like themselves, but on a second reading, I see that the writer blames schools for making us all the same - doctors, lawyers, etc. We all grow up in a little box and grow up to have children who are in those same boxes who grow up to have children who, well you get the point! The song doesn't give any suggestions for change or improvement, but it was written at the dawn of the sixties. The Wellman article (Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism) challenges whether we still live in those boxes or whether technology, specifically the Internet and other Web devices have freed us from our own "ticky-tacky."

I started thinking about my own little box. Are all the people within my "network" just like me? If they are, just how like me are they and if they aren't, how are we different? Wellman makes the point that we increasingly use technology to reach out to others while ignoring those that back in the day would have been our "group." For example, through email, snail mail, cell phone, and, especially, Facebook, I am able to keep in contact with many of my friends and co-workers back east. We have frequent, sometimes daily contact and yet, I do not know the name of even one of my neighbors in my apartment complex - not one - even though I've lived there for two years! I've made a choice to stay in contact with my back east friends and pretty much ignore those in my immediate vicinity. Way back when before the Internet, our neighbors were our closest friends and, many times, our co-workers as well.

So, that begs the question, is my "ticky-tacky" box bigger than it would have been in years past? Is it possible that I am maintaining multiple little boxes of comrades just like me? All I need do is take a look at my Gmail labels: "Running", "Tucson Friends", "East Coast Friends", "Family", "Work." Aren't these my little boxes? My life seems so compartmentalized these days. Most of my meetings with friends are one-on-one - very individual. I have lunch with this one, run with that one, make an appointment to call another. In the GOD (good old days), I might have run across the street to my best friend's house six times a day. Now I'm overloaded with ways to keep in touch because we now demand more individual attention from our friends and family.

On the other hand, I am now able to accomplish so much more with many more people. Wellman uses the term "glocalization" to describe groups working independent of their surroundings. Although each person in the group has their own local space and they are all feel connected, there is little consciousness of the spaces in between. I have so many examples of this in my own life right now, it's not funny, including engaging in a very successful long-distance relationship that has recently made the jump from "glocal" to local.

Elluminate session 1 (Wednesday September 10, 2008 11:00 am CST)

This week I dropped in on the first Elluminate (live) session. Although there was much that sparked thought, I'd like to touch on just one or two things quickly. There was discussion about the impact of an individual's web-presence. How do our clicks and comments effect how others see us? What are the implications of our web personalities? How much credence should we give to the web presence of others? Where do we draw that line? I'm told that my name was Googled before I was interviewed for my current position and I am always careful about my web presence because I know that people are going to look. I am 47years-old, for goodness sakes, I'm too old to post my most embarrassing moments, but what about my replies to discussion boards? Will someone in the future care if I posted to the Gackt Facebook page? Will listening to Japanese music work for or against me? Will my FB friends work for or against me? What about friends of my friends? When my children were in high school, they had Live Journal pages. I gained access to those pages and learned more than I wanted to know about my kids and WAY more than I wanted to know about their friends! What happens when one of these pages shows up 20 years from now? Will a person still be judged by their high school actions? All I can say here is thank goodness there's no evidence from my high school years!

Another participant, Lisa M. Lane, asked, "to what extent do we divide our personalities based on the type of forum?" Our work and "home" personalities are blurring. My co-workers have only to visit the aforementioned Facebook page or look at my iTunes list to get a glimpse into my "home" personality. In fact, just about anyone in the world can find out what type of music I like, what I do in my spare time, where I went to school, and what I do for a living in just a few clicks. Do I care? Should I? What good or evil could a person do with this information? Several of my co-workers have created alternate personalities in Second Life. Their Second Life personalities now have their own Facebook pages with only their SL friends. What effect does this splitting of personalities have on our own idea of who we are? Maybe it doesn't have any effect. Maybe it's an outward extension of who we wish we were or perhaps our lives are so open that we are creating alternate personalities to control what the world sees of us.

Connectivism
So where does that leave me at the end of week one in my knowledge of Connectivism? Not very far, I'm afraid! I'm just beginning to make some space in my schemas for connectivism. At some point, one of the instructors stated that connectivism goes beyond knowledge as a qualitative or quanitiative property. It draws on sources that are not language based and therefore are more difficult to define than behaviorism or constructivism, for example. Hmmmm... I'm still chewing on that one! I was reminded though of James Burke's work, The Axmaker's Gift, in which Burke writes about how human inventions so fundamentally change our lives that our brains change and never quite function the same. The question here is has technology so changed our lives that we may now learn in ways that are fundamentally different from previous generations? Does instant access to answers change the way we think? What are the ways in which we cannot return to pre-technological means? And what does all this mean for our students and the future of teaching and learning?

Questions, questions, questions...

Introduction

Hello, my name is Inez Whipple and I'll be participating in a course from the University of Manitoba called, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. It's as 12 week course with over 1600 people enrolled form all over the world! What a great opportunity to connect with people and never have to leave my cactus, sunshine and blue skies!

I'll be using this blog to capture my thoughts, reactions, and learning during the next 12 weeks. Here's the course description from the course blog

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge is a twelve week course that will explore the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. It will outline a connectivist understanding of educational systems of the future. This course will help participants make sense of the transformative impact of technology in teaching and learning over the last decade. The voices calling for reform do so from many perspectives, with some suggesting 'new learners' require different learning models, others suggesting reform is needed due to globalization and increased competition, and still others suggesting technology is the salvation for the shortfalls evident in the system today. While each of these views tell us about the need for change, they overlook the primary reasons why change is required.

Information about this course was passed to me by a co-worker and colleague. Hopefully, there will several of us joining the course. What interested me most was the idea of exploring the “transformative impact of technology in teaching and learning.” As an instructional designer of mainly online courses, I’m interested in how we can use technology to increase, not only accessibility to learning, but increase learning itself.

As for what has to happen for me to consider this course a success, two things come to mind. First and foremost, I will need to feel a part of the course, not a voyeur or a wall flower. Most of that responsibility lies within myself, but I’m hoping for some feedback from others so that I can feel a “part of the action.” Second, I need to be able to keep up with the course work. I’m not sure I have the time for this, but I am going to schedule in time during the week so that I can have a reminder to check in and work on being a part of this course.

Random information about me…

I’m an instructional designer at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona.

I came here to get away from the gray skies and snow in my hometown Reading, Pennsylvania.

I love my job!

My friends and family think I’m amazing because of the amount of technology that I work with. Little do they know…

I work with a relatively small amount of technologies - hardware or software - and there always seems to be so much I’ve never even heard of, much less seen or experienced. I usually end up feeling incompetent at conferences and workshops.

I have a great interest in working with developmental education students.