letter from George Siemens

I wrote this comment about George Siemens at Mark Nichols blog:

I agree that George is a nice guy, he encouraged me as a critic, but feel he had done us a disservice by prematurely producing a new theory of learning before doing the hard hards of integrating the other, older theories - which I believe makes connectivism superfluous. I see that as another aspect of the attention economy

George has replied at Mark's blog with this letter quoted in full below. I'm just putting this on my own table for now as something I ought to respond too at some point, not sure when, due to other commitments. I encourage others interested in connectivism and web2.0 / learning2.0 theory to study the full discussion especially between Mark and George starting here, Solid Thinking: a challengable position on learning2.0 and the incumbent

Great to see some substantial debate on learning theory, going deeper than what normally happens in the blogosphere, thanks to Mark and George.

Hi Bill,

As I've stated numerous times, I appreciate your viewpoints. I've learned much through our previous discussions. Our interactions has helped me to personally define my own perspectives and viewpoints. I hope you'll have time (or interest) to participate in the upcoming Connectivism and Connective Knowledge online course we're offering in fall: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/connectivism/

One of the more consistent claims you have directed at connectivism is that a) it addresses what is already addressed by existing theories and b) that I haven't done my homework with regard to other theories and have prematurely offered a counter perspective.

As much as this may shock you, I disagree on both accounts :). First, I don't think existing address what happens in a networked world (I'm less interested in "connectivism" surviving as a concept than I am in educators rethinking teaching and learning in a world where we interact in significantly different ways with information and each other...I've posited connectivism and one notion, others have suggested networked learning more broadly (particularly de laat, Koper, CR Jones), Brown suggestions "navigationism", and Cormier more recently offers rhizomatic knowledge). My premise is still largely unchanged, though I personally wish I would have used different language in my initial post as sections have become a distraction to the real issue. I believe that our ability to access, create, disseminate, co-create, alter, and multi-create (i.e. in different media - sorry I don't have a better word) information substantially alters learning. My logic is really quite simple: information is the foundation of knowledge and learning. When we do different things with information, the systems built on information, namely knowledge and learning, require some degree of rethinking. Perhaps the rethinking is on level with what Mark suggests - i.e. subsume new tools and processes into existing models of education. Or perhaps the required rethinking is more radical (as I would suggest).

Regardless of approach, we can glean much from existing theories of learning - namely the situatedness, sociability, and contextual dimensions of learning. Can we draw from the work of theorists such as Vygotsky, Bruner, Dewey, Papert, Leont'v, Wenger, Lave, Piaget, Engestrom, and others? Of course we can. But by drawing on their work and by integrating disparate thoughts and ideas about distributed cognition, activity theory, tool-mediated interactions, social networks, etc., we end up with something new. And, I choose to call this connectivism :).

Your second point stems partly from what I addressed above (though your criticism here is slightly moderated from what you have previously offered in that I created a theory without being aware of existing theories). This is a frighteningly obvious thing to say, but we have not reached the end of theorizing about learning. We are very much at the beginning. Disciplines that have hundreds, even thousands of years of discourse(philosophy and religion come readily to mind), have created a rich knowledge base where divergent and integrative ideas have been put forward. If one doesn't like Plato, they can have Kant. Or if Descartes is not to your liking, go with Nietzsche. In educational theory we have a shallow brand of thought, easily categorized into three broad streams (with corresponding epistemological roots): behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism. As the edtech field matures, I suspect we'll continue to see a diversification of thought about learning theory.

Does one theory have to be declared "the winner"? Maybe personally (i.e. each person selects the theory and world view that resonates with their thinking - as Mark has done by declaring social constructivism as his preferred view of learning). But I don't think we can have one theory for the entire school system and for all learners. As always, context is king.

Beyond these few simple comments, I have written about these concepts at length in other forums (of which you are aware), so I suspect there is limited value in simply repeating my previous claims.

As always, Bill, a pleasure chatting :).

George

******************

I went back and quickly reread some of my old blog and wiki commentaries about connectivism as a starting point to update my thoughts. The following still seem relevant to me at this point:

which radical discontinuity?

"pipe more important than the contents" revisited

A CHALLENGE TO CONNECTIVISM (connectivism conference presentation)

UPDATE (21st June, 2008):

After reading all of George's comments I've left this comment at Mark's blog:

Theories of learning ought to be thought about in terms of learning *something*. That something is sometimes learning about learning theories but to be authentic (fair dinkum) I think there should be some element in there of children learning about their world. One feeling I have about George's writing here (and earlier when I read quite a lot of George, including most of his book) is the tendency to cite lots of authors and their ideas but IMO it lacks the nitty gritty of a real practice to theory spiral

By contrast when I read Minsky he talks about kids learning to build with blocks; Piaget talks about children changing their knowledge structures over time about the amount poured from one glass of water to another of different shape; Papert always includes anecdotes about his experiences with children and his own learning, etc. These authors theorise a lot as well but they convey their message through the full theory / practice spiral

The point that Mark has raised with regard to the scope of web2.0 / learning2.0 / connectivism is what I call slow, deep thinking. Do they help in that regard?

Leigh mentioned, and is working with, Konrad Glogowski who I feel has deeply addressed the question of children learning how to write well using a combination of blogging and Vygotskian ideas. eg. it takes 18 months of developing an environment of trust for creative writing to emerge.

Although learning theories can address any or all types of learning I think we also need ways to identify which knowledge is more important --> something which I believe was not done in the initial formulation of the connectivism theory. Everyone here seems to agree that slow, deep thinking is important but that can be easily forgotten in the hurly burly of School. I've read articles about powerful learning which fail to identify why it is powerful. (does world of warcraft really lead to powerful learning, what are our criteria?) So what knowledge is important or powerful? How do we identify that in a way that is more significant than just someone's opinion? For me that question has been best answered in fairly obscure references by alan kay about non-universals.

From anthropological research of over 3000 human cultures, he presented two lists, the first were universals, the things that all human cultures have in common. This list included things like:

* language
* communication
* fantasies
* stories
* tools and art
* superstition
* religion and magic
* play and games
* differences over similarities
* quick reactions to patterns
* vendetta, and more

He then presented a list of non universals, the things that humans find harder to learn. This list was shorter and included:

* reading and writing
* deductive abstract mathematics
* model based science
* equal rights
* democracy
* perspective drawing
* theory of harmony
* similarities over differences
* slow deep thinking
* agriculture
* legal systems

I think a good test of a modern learning theory is its ability to address the non universal list - and connectivism or web2.0 or learning2.0 doesn't throw much light at all in that direction. I think that some other theorists at least do address those issues, eg. Papert, Vygotsky

which radical discontinuity?

I've uploaded my oral presentation to the connectivism conference here. To follow along download the mp3 and slides. Thanks to Leigh Blackall for recording and editing this. There were some interruptions due to my connection being lost a few times, which was unfortunate, but didn't spoil things too much. The chat went ahead fine without me there! I've since been checking my broadband speed and have found out that it varies enormously from test to test - need to work out how to dialogue about this with my ISP effectively.

(all the presentations - George Siemens, Will Richardson, Diana Oblinger, Bill Kerr, Stephen Downes, Terry Anderson - are available from the Manitoba moodle site, here)

I structured my presentation so that there were breaks and time for questions and passing the microphone around and some of this did happen

Here's an after the event elaboration on one slide from my talk:

RADICAL DISCONTINUITY

I'd like to look at the notion of radical discontinuity, that there is radical discontinuity happening in some domains but possible not in others:

1. New tools, web apps. YES, there are hundreds / thousands of new web apps coming on line all of the time

2. New learning environments – augmented conversation, communication and collaboration. YES, you can obtain a lot of excellent advice about how to integrate a new web app into your teaching situation by searching around blogs of educators.

3. New curriculum. NOT YET? I give the example of Greg Whitby's new school in Sydney
where, to quote from the linked article:

"I get the feeling that curriculum reform - and getting that to work in a more or less traditional curriculum framework - hasn't been addressed as deeply as the other aspects of the project (space, time, built environment, "web2.0"). You can't change everything else and keep an old curriculum"

Probably need to talk about this one more. Tony Forster I think would argue that VELS is a new curriculum framework which emphasises more about process skills and less about specific content. One big problem I see with this argument is that we don't currently have either the infrastructure (eg. one laptop per child) or sufficient teachers with the required skills to deliver such a curriculum to everyone. Nothing like it. Until this happens this new curriculum is really just a piece of paper.

4. New epistemology, a new nature of knowledge. What I argued in my presentation was a few of things.

First, most of what we need (not all) has already been brilliantly provided by past learning theories. I tried to summarise this with two big ideas from the past, which cover a lot of ground:

• Papert's idea of "objects to think with", such as the logo programming language for starters
• Vygotsky's idea that we use language to author our own self development

Second, even though these ideas are great everything keeps moving and nothing stays still. Learning theory evolves. But I think the new territory which George Siemens connectivism and Stephen Downes connective knowledge seeks to claim has either already been claimed by others or has been better done by others. Theories of distributed cognition are not new and the direction being mapped by Stephen Downes, which emerged more clearly from the forum discussion, is not good IMHO.

I've started a new page on the wiki about What is knowledge? It was very encouraging that educators wanted to grapple with this fundamental question in the chat room

5. New political awareness. I think that's needed, that a lot of the blockage is at that level. I like this slogan:

"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet" - William Gibson

I see distribution as mainly a political issue, who is stopping the future from being distributed?

slogans that resonate

Steve Hargadon has created a School 2.0 wiki. On the wiki there is a School 2.0 Manifesto which consists of a series of one line thought provoking statements, with links to further elaboration.

I added some one liners in a comment to Christopher Sessums blog, who is supporting this effort. Here are my one liners, with some elaborations (I hope to do more elaborations later):

• one laptop per child

Elaboration: If the third world can have one laptop per child then why can't the first and second worlds?

• search is the opposite of sit and listen

• support the rights of the child to explore new technology

Elaboration: The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice. (Article 13, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child)

• a risk free society is very dangerous

• learn to be free (pinched from Chrisopher Harvey's old blog but he taken it down now)
  

• isn't a mobile phone a learning device?

• who should define the curriculum? (this last one is too broad)
  

• eat your own dogfood

I'd like to do a bit more critical analysis of the slogans at Steve's wiki, from the perspective of whether connectivism is sufficient as a theory or viewpoint to incorporate them all. Analysing the slogans that have been thrown up might be a good way to figure out the current "spirit of our age"

I just spent some time going through the slogans and trying to understand the thinking behind them.

One big theme is freedom talk, with the related ideas of tearing down existing school walls and escaping to the rich (often digital) landscape outside, of opening wide, providing far more choice and being transparent in what we do (dot points 4-11).

Although it is true that we are more connected than ever before in our history there is nothing new about the ideas being promoted here. Many educational reformers have long promoted the idea that School is a form of gaol and radical reform has long been on their agenda. However, the fact we are now far more connected, communicating and collaborating, does make it more possible to realise this dream.

Another theme which is repeated over an over is the importance of conversation. This is sometimes connected to the idea that questions are more important than answers.

Again, there is nothing new about this. For example, one of Papert's principles of mathetics was that "a good conversation promotes learning". All learning theories that try to put direct instruction into the background (and there are many of them) highlight the importance of conversation. Once again a great idea that is not new.

Christian Long's slogans are more complicated and I would need to spend more time with them to understand what he is getting at. Sorry, this is a bit rushed.

A theme which for some reason surprised me in Christopher Sessums slogans (which were more sequential than some of the others) was about keeping all stakeholders informed and supported, followed by the suggestion that schools fear public and open disclosure, that schools might be broken and hiding it. Read his whole blog to do it justice.

Here are some of the slogans which I either liked or which intrigued me:

• The fear of what might go wrong can't stop us from doing what is right
  

• What we want to teach we must become (this reminded me of "eat your own dogfood" which I have used before)
  

• You can regulate the worst of abuses out of a system, but you can never regulate goodness or excellence because goodness and excellence comes from the hearts and minds of people within the system - Tom Sobol
  

• We participate, therefore we are - John Seely Brown
  

• When rules of usage are top-down and policy driven they disenfranchise users. Rules that regulate usage should be decided by users themselves who then self-manage their activity.
  

• Many schools operate out of fear of their constituencies and stakeholders. Many schools are afraid what the public would say if they knew what was going on inside.

I need to do some more thinking about this but it seems clear to me that the connection metaphor does not really cut the hard stuff. How to overcome the risk free society mentality? What do you do when those privileged by the current system resist? How to bring out the best in people? Will teachers lead the change or will it happen from outside of schools, or by a student underground, or some sort of combination? Will the change be incremental or sudden, a reform or a revolution? These are complex social and political questions requiring analysis. Connection as a metaphor is too simple.

connectivism challenge essay draft

I've put a draft of my connectivism conference presentation here: A Challenge to Connectivism.

I'm interested in feedback. If you don't want to join the wiki then leave a comment here or send me email. Thanks.

OVERVIEW OF MY ARGUMENT

The role of language (Vygotsky) and “objects to think with” (Papert) in learning predate the Internet

The theory of embodied active cognition (Clark, 1997) argues that the scaffolding provided by language and "objects to think with" extends our minds from the brain into the environment.

I would argue that the sort of ideas being put forward in connectivism theory have already been developed by Clark. Language is so ubiquitous that it is not always noticed. Network based learning theories might be more visible because the network is more visible.

"pipe more important than contents" revisited

The curriculum, being told what to teach makes some people feel secure. If we had the freedom to choose what to teach, then what would we teach? Freedom is hard.

Here is a connectivist style argument putting the case for change:

If year 12 exams are content based then nobody can blame teachers for focusing on content. That is true but another way to look at it is that students see schools as less relevant each year because the students have little input into what they have to learn.

Some assertions:

1) half life for relevance of any given piece of knowledge is declining
2) informal learning is becoming more important
3) The pipe is more important than the contents

The above quote is based on something I wrote to the South Australian teachers list in January 2006 when I was more supportive (but with some reservations even then) of George Siemen's connectivism theory

An interesting discussion ensued, here are some of the points and counter points that were debated :

• Students need to obtain a certain level of independent learning skills before they can learn how to use the "pipe"
• Some content is important, trust me, it's the adult teachers who know this, not the students.
• Students need guidance about what content is important, guidance about what that content actually means when they study it and guidance about how to apply it
• One lister expressed anger that his daughter had done a tertiary photography course and had not been taught about focal length.
• Discovery learning and student centred learning can largely be dismissed as fads, which lack sufficient teacher direction. Course objectives that replaced content with expressions such as "must be able to seek appropriate methods and apply them accordingly" were ridiculed.
• Teaching learning how to learn skills is important (granted) but content is still very important. We are going backwards wrt science, maths and trade skills in Australia
• The difficulty of trying to define "fundamental knowledge" and the amount of time that can be wasted in attempting to do that
• The counter argument that "fundamental knowledge" does change over time but it is still worthwhile spending the time to re-evaluate and define it
  

So the discussion morphed. The pipe / content slogan was a reasonable way to morph into discussion about the nature of knowledge (not whether content is important, but which content is important?) an evaluation of different learning approaches (since open ended discovery learning doesn't work then what approaches do work?) and the role of the teacher in the classroom (direct guidance versus other approaches).

But the slogan, "The pipe is more important than the contents" doesn't hold any deeper meaning than being a good, provocative discussion starter. The responses I received on the list shows that teachers are looking for hard edged, verifiable theories with exemplars. Although, sometimes, this does reflect conservative attitudes about change from some teachers the responses are nevertheless extremely reasonable.

the skin is not all that important as a boundary

A CHALLENGE TO CONNECTIVISM
- connectivism conference presentation
(this replaces an earlier summary)
register
schedule and all abstracts

Abstract: Connectivism attempts to redefine learning. Existing theories are superficially critiqued. An artificial radical discontinuity is manufactured. A new learning theory is invented without adequate grounding. The critique is situated by positive reference to existing learning theories.

"the skin is not all that important as a boundary" BF Skinner

The notorious Skinner got that one right. The boundary issue is crucial. In considering the learning process we need to ask: What happens inside our body / brain, what happens outside, in the external environment, and how are the inside and the outside connected? What is the mind, where is it and how does it work? These are core theoretical questions about learning with immense practical significance. The necessary process of formulating a new learning theory ought to incorporate and struggle with a modern synthesis of philosophy, cognitive science (including artifical intelligence research) and the history of learning theory. My critique of George Siemen's Connectivism suggests that a better job could have been done.

I'm keeping the full draft here and currently updating daily. Please leave your critical comments either as a comment on this blog or join the wiki and leave it there.

connectivism time zone problem

The connectivism conference (Feb 2-9) schedule and abstracts are here

For the Australian region the conference times are not good, they could not be worse IMO. All the sessions except for mine will run at 11am Winnipeg time, which converts to 3:30AM Adelaide, South Australia time on the next day and 4:00am Melbourne time (east coast of Australia)

George rescheduled my session to 1:30PM Winnipeg time, which converts to 6AM Adelaide time and 6:30AM on the east coast of Australia

However, it's still unreasonable for Australians and others in this time zone, who wish to participate in the whole conference.

If you wish to participate and find the time issue unreasonable then maybe leave a comment on this blog or alternatively write to me (billkerr (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll pass it onto George. If there is a lot of interest then he might be persuaded to change the times to allow participation from this time zone.

I'd be interested to hear from others who have organised conferences across the globe about how these sorts of issues are normally worked out

btw I've been quiet on my blog recently because of working hard on the learning evolves wiki, where I'm making notes on various learning theories in preparation for the conference. Tony Forster has recently been active there too.

a challenge to connectivism

George Siemens has invited me to present to the Connectivism Online Conference that he is organising in February 2-9, 2007. Thanks George, for being prepared to listen to a critical voice.

I'm collecting my thoughts at the learning theory evolves wiki so go there for more detail. Find links to George's original paper and other resources here

Here is a summary of my current position on connectivism (subject to change as I learn more). I'd rather see the discussion start now than wait until February so please post your comments and criticisms here or on the wiki (after joining)

A challenge to connectivism
Networks are important but haven't changed learning so much that we need to throw away all of the established learning theories and replace them with a brand new one. How do we test whether a new idea is an interesting speculation or something more substantial? A good learning theory should:

1. contribute to a theory/practice spiral of curriculum / learning reform,
2. provide a significant new perspective about how we see learning happening
3. represent historical alternatives accurately.

Connectivism fails on the first count by using language and slogans that are sometimes “correct” but are too generalised to guide new practice at the level of how learning actually happens.

Connectivisim does contribute to a general world outlook but we already have theories and manifestos for that view (systems theory, chaos theory, network theory, cluetrain manifesto), so we don't need a new -ism in this respect.

Finally, connectivism misrepresents the current state of established alternative learning theories such as constructivism, behaviourism and cognitivism, so this basis for a new theory is also dubious.