Post on 06-May-2015
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What do connections do?George Siemens, PhD
May 31, 2012Presented to:
SUNYStony Brook, New York
Networks aren’t new
Inca Temple Nodes
Network language is so pervasive that we rarely move past “node/connection” discourse
i.e.
Source: http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html
or
Source: http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/ClusterBall
But most networks are far more complex
Contractor, Monge, Leonardi (2011)
Multiple node types, Multiple relationships
Contractor, Monge, Leonardi (2011)
This is especially true as information continues to be digitized (and increase in abundance)
Distributed cognition - information held in technology & artifacts
Innovation as constant combinations and recombinations of existing technologies
Rocket
Source: http://www.solarnavigator.net/inventors/george_stephenson.htm
“the thousand threads that lead from the locomotive to the very beginnings of the modern world”Rosen, 2010
Knowledge has a structure
Source: http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/
Knowledge has a history (archeology)
Archeology of Knowledge
“history deciphered the traces left by men, it now deploys a mass of elements that have to be grouped, made relevant, placed in relation to one another to form totalities”
(Foucault)
Note quality of Inca stone work (bottom)
(Spanish top)
Incan-Foundation
Spanish addition
Learning (education) is the process of developing awareness of the connections in a discipline.
Three levels
NeuralConceptualSocial/External
Science as a connective enterprise
(Bibliography…and Garfield’s impact factor as inspiration for Google)
The scientific method is a structured process for connection validation
Northeast Blackout: 2003
From 12:15 pm to 4:13 pm:
Small power-flow monitoring tool failure to 250+ power plant failure
“A fundamental property of interdependent networks is that failure of nodes in one network may lead to failure of dependent nodes in other networks. This may happen recursively and can lead to a cascade of failures.”
Buldyrev et al (2010)
Thinking in networks
Our education system should communicate information (idea) relatedness and connectivity
(not discrete knowledge elements)
Coherence
Synchronization
Resonance
Lock-in
Coherence
“an ancient urge to seek a comprehensive picture of the worldfor the sake of understanding ourselves, for knowledge’s sake, and not the least for acting as best we can”
Cordero 2007
Resonance
“psychological arousal”
AppleSilicon ValleyBoundary-based lock-in
Creating integrated ecosystems:Content,Delivery,Assessment
(The integrator, rules)
MOOCs
How can an educator teach 1,000, 5,000, or 100,000 students?
MOOCs
They can’t. The learners teach one another(fill knowledge gaps in others)
Half-ideas colliding to form new (innovative) knowledge wholes: MOOCs
Education system
- Should be about spaces for optimal idea connectedness
- Space design, not only learning design- Openness of content and teaching enlarges
society’s capacity to handle complex problems- xED is academia’s push back at
commercialization of knowledge/learning
Expertise development through activities that activate multiple (meaningful) knowledge connections
Participatory pedagogies
Creating: artifacts, stuff, remixing, new assemblies, novel connectedness
New points of control in connection-formation
redistribute power in society
(education)
15-M Movement
Source: Speigel
Quebec Student Tuition Protests, 2012
Future of Higher Education MOOCStarts: Oct 2012
More info on www.elearnspace.org/blog soon
“networked science has the potential to dramatically speed up the rate of scientific discovery”
Distributed Research Lab:
http://www.solaresearch.org/storm/
Looking for research leads and doctoral students
Learning Analytics: Practitioners Workshop
Purdue: Oct 1-3, 2012
http://www.solaresearch.org/flare/
Twitter: gsiemens
www.elearnspace.org
www.connectivism.ca