Connectivism

http://www.downes.ca/post/33034

During an earlier blog I asked for help finding an article from Stephen Downes to read and I was presented with this link. I have read most of it (it was rather lengthy) but from what I got from it was what I have always know and have taught in math class. This can be summed up rather quickly and easily by an example: If I draw a picture of a box but I don’t connect the last corner together, meaning I leave a gap can you still tell what it is? Of course, that is the thought process in your mind that always uses patterns and will complete objects that are not complete in order to make sense of them. To me, connectivism is just that. We all connect things in our lives to make sense of things we don’t understand. We are also willing to learn and want to learn thing that we are interested in. The key is to connect to things that you are interested in thus wanting to the learn the subject matter and making it easier to learn and remember.

Blogging my troubles away

I feel like telling all my problems today. Hopefully this will help me to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have been working, or so I thought, like all the other students in my gaming and distance ed class, but I feel like I have fallen behind. I don’t have any understanding of the final project for either class, and feel like I am procrastinating to much. I usually have all my assignments in early because I don’t like to wait because if problems arise, I like to have time to fix them, but if you don’t know what you are doing procrastination works well. I have an assignment due today in gaming, but I can’t seem to get it to email or upload and I am bugging other students for help, but can’t seem to figure it out. Now that isn’t all that is going wrong, I have been looking for a theory article to read from Stephen’s blogs, and was even given that link to it, but I am so computer illiterate I don’t know what to read on that link. i start several of the articles but they don’t seem to have a theory in mind. So if anyone has a exact link to read on please let me know. i have read so many things, I think I will just blog on all of them and hope that I am hitting the question with at least one. Now, I do feel better, but I don’t think that it will help with my assignments, but at least you all know I have been trying, just not succeeding.

Stephen Downes Theory

I am having trouble finding a theory. I have looked through his blogs and have not found any choices to look at. I think I am going about it the wrong way. I am typing theories into the search for Stephen Downes and it comes back with weird info. I need some help. Either, how to find a good theory to research or just give ma a web link to read. Why I am having so much problems with it I don’ t know. Please help.

theories, what we “know”

I wanted to blog on my thoughts about theories and what I know before reading any of the actual theories. I sat through all the classes that are suppose to talk about the theories that you are to know for teaching. I felt like I was ready to accomplish all of those theories, but in practice they don’t always work. There don’t have a theory to tell you what to do when a students is homeless, do they still get “home” work? I feel that they only thing we “know” is what we have experienced. We know what works with the group of students we have right now because we deal with them on a daily basis and have tried everything we can thing of to teach them. So in theory, we can understand what is suppose to work, but what we “know” works is what we have actually accomplished in the classroom. And of course, this changes with every set of students you have especially now with the digital natives coming through.

Connectivism

I read this blog and thought, HMMM, I believe this is telling us that this class is moving us in the right direction. I feel like they are saying the same thing as Dr. Lowell. We need to be connected using blogs, wiki, second life. Blogging is knowledge. All the scholarly people are blogging and if you don’t agree you can blog back and discuss your concerns. This to me is like an open invitation to get you ideas and belief or just clear up misconceptions that you may have out there into the world. We are also learning to connect with our students by doing what the students are doing and like to do. This connects us to the students as well as the rest of the world, although, I’m not brave enough to get on myspace yet because I feel like that is just for kids, I could be wrong though.

reading for this week

Just wondering what everyone else read on the link from the assignment page. i looked at it but it had 12 pages of links to blogs. I couldn’t find the teacher and students working together one. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

“known it all” and “Teachers pet”

I always hated those term because I don’t have a teachers pet. I, of course, have students that I will trust more than others, but as to say they are my “pet”, I feel like that is implying I like that student(s) more than the others and that just isn’t so in my case ( I can’t stand any of them, lol). No, but really, I like all my students, I just don’t want to have to teach some of them math, but out in the halls or out of school I don’t mind one bit to talk to them.

Ok, now for the subject at hand, “know it all”, these students are the ones that you call on when no one else knows the answer, they are the ones that show the other students that it is obtainable to learn, and they are the ones that all the other students verbally bash and secretly admire. These are the students that keep you on your toes and correct you when needed and keep you on the task at hand when you get off subject too long (at least some of mine do). I don’t have a know it all in every class due to the type of classes I am teaching and I feel that the classes with a know it all seem to be better organized and have more student participation. I am unsure why, maybe the other students are silently competing to see if they can answer the questions correctly more than the “know it all”. My one class with out a know it all is hard to ask questions with because when you get to a hard one, you don’t know who to ask because it requires the deeper understanding to answer it and no one is there to do it. So I feel the “know it all” is there to give you as the teacher a challenge and the students a challenge to keep them at the higher order thinking. I hate asking a questions that you know no one in the class knows. (by the way I usually end up answering it myself after several wrong answers are shouted out). ” Know it all “students facilitate the high thinking questions, in turn help to make the class a higher learning class.

Now on to “teachers pet”, even thought I don’t have a single person per say, I do have student that I trust to sent somewhere without getting into any trouble. I don’t know their purpose of a teachers pet in a classroom, but it must have something to do with class discipline since I have the worst disciplined classes in the schools. (I go to more than one school that is why it is plural). I used to think that it was the students, but now I feel that it is me. Maybe the teachers pet helps with the class discipline because they like you and want the other students to act appropriately thus helping out the climate of the classroom. I am unsure, and again since I don’t have one I really don’t know. I do want to point out that I have had one student in the past 5 years of teaching that I might of called my pet, but I don’t think the student realized it because I try to treat them all equitably. Help on the “teachers pet” would be nice.
Do all teachers have a pet?? Maybe I do and don’t know it, but I can’t think of any students I like more than any other. Please feel free to comment on this because now I feel like a bad teacher not connecting with their students. I guess the students would tell me if I asked. huh!

A students role

I have been thinking about the questions posted on blackboard and have come up with some answers that I hope you will all help me out with. I want to start off by saying that I am a back row person who usually sits in the front row in a classroom. I want to blend in and not have to participate much, but don’t want the lousy grades usually associated with the back of the room. (on a side note, I always sit by the door in a actually classroom so that I can be to my seat quickly because I am usually late, plus I’m the first one out the door too) Now, classes on the internet don’t have a back row, thus everything that I do is noticed no matter where I sit or what I do (or don’t do, in my case usually). So, my answer to the dynamics of a front row, back row person is that you have to be a front row person when you are online otherwise your not going to know what you are doing and will be totally lost. Catching up with an online course is a lot harder to do than in a classroom where a “know it all” student can just tell you what you missed and your caught up. I feel that the dynamics of an online classroom are more on a one to one basis. The teacher usually talks with you specifically when you have a problem or need help. This is different than in a classroom because you are able to ask questions without the other students knowing that you are “stupid” (to use the students terms) and don’t know something.

The students role in a classroom as well as online is more than just a student. Students are also to facilitate learning by asking questions, starting and maintaining discussions, and participating in those discussions. When I read this I immediately thought of a class I had once where no one would talk. You would ask a question and wait and eventually the one student that got tired of waiting, for someone else to respond would raise their hand. If their is no discussion between students or class, then the learning is hindered because they aren’t asking the questions they need to know. This means they are learning the content that you provide by aren’t elaborating to get the depth of knowledge that leads to learning.

Create VS organize

After reading all the blogs I agree with all that was said so far, but would like to interject that we are creators of learning. We are the ones that put that knowledge into the students head, it wasn’t there before, hence we created it (from the students perspective). Now, we also place it in the head in such a way (organize) that they are able to remember it and use it later. This organization we are creating also, thus in a way creating and organizing are the same things. I am not implying that we are organizing the information in their brains, because each person does that differently based on life experiences, but we do organize the order that it goes in, the amount a day we give them, and the remembering devices to make it easier to remember when applicable.

Ok, so you said it was a trick and I was trying to think outside the box, thus this goes to show you that everyone’s ideas and life experiences alter their perspective on life and how things occur. I think that it also depends on how one defines create and organize. Since I was told that their was a trick, I tried to come up with something besides my first impression to the questions, which was we organize. I looked at it as we didn’t come up with the theorems that we are using in class, thus we are organizing the way the students perceive the data.
So, that is my opinion.