Comments on week two of CCK08
One of the comments in Stephen Downes’s first email for the course (which I’ve only just now got round to reading) is the idea of wayfinding with a course this size. With over 2000 people and a dozen different tools to keep in touch, it can be a bit bewildering at first. I’ve found some strategies to deal with this.
1) Use someone else’s filter. My first port of call when I had some time to look at this was the Chilbo site in SL. Fleep has put together a little library of resources which pulls together everything into one convenient spot.
2) Click on things at random. Through Fleep’s list I found the Pageflakes site for the course, and it so happened that in the RSS feed was this link http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/09/connectivism-cr.html which is another filter that I found useful. This suggested going straight to the Moodle site, which I did, but then got lost again in amongst all the blogs.
3) Give up trying to make sense of it all. The most difficult step to take as a learner, but one I think is becoming increasingly important as the nature of learning content and information metastasises in online course. As an online student on previous courses, or attendee at online conferences, I’ve found the only way to cope is to find a corner that looks interesting and play in that. Defining learning as getting a handle on everything on the course is impossible. The only way to do it is to aim to make sense of something.
It’s interesting that people are sticking to the notion of the course being a body of knowledge that needs to be acquired (you need to think rhizomatically, people) and when this isn’t possible either blame themselves for not getting a handle on it, or the course layout for being “one of the most annoying pieces of crap I’ve encountered in a long time” (that link from above again). It’s just a matter of not being hung up on the traditional definition of “course”.
My own hang-up though is the idea of contributing. One of Stephen Downes’s posts mentions that on a previous course only 5% of participants contributed. I want to be one of those people, otherwise I’m just lurking, which isn’t very productive. However, I feel the need to post somewhere where people can see I’m contributing, so at least the “teachers” can see I’m doing my homework :$ I’m not sure if these posts make it anywhere into the course where anyone can see it.
I have sent a couple of posts to the google group, but that seems to have gone quiet. I’ll try and attend the third Chilbo Tuesday meeting (I didnt find out about the first one until too late, and the second was on my birthday). So far though I don;t think I’ve quite learned enough to make a useful contribution. So far though, looking at other people’s contributions, I’m not sure anyone else has. Is this a flaw with the rhizomic model of learning — it takes longer for a substantial body of understanding to build up sufficiently, whereas going straight to a canon and adopting that is a quicker route to having something to say.
Tags: CCK08