Resonance in blogging

This idea – raised in our research team – has grabbed my attention. Why is it that when communicating online we are immediately drawn to certain people’s posts/blogs and not to others? We resonate with certain people and ideas and not with others,  just as I was immediately attracted to the idea of resonance in online communication. I have spent a little time checking on my understanding of resonance and these are some of the explanations that for me relate to blogging as a means of online communication.

• Resonance is the amplifaction of sound through sympathetic vibrations.
• To resonate means to correspond closely or harmoniously.
• Resonance occurs when the vibrations of one object come into alignment with another.
• Resonance evokes a feeling of shared emotion or belief.

These explanations make sense to me in relation to blogging. I can recognise them in my own blogging behaviour. I am drawn to blogs where these ideas come into play. The content of a blog post on its own is not enough to draw me in. I might be attracted by the idea/s but I will soon lose interest if there are no feelings of resonance. But I have no idea why one blog will set off this resonance and another won’t and I don’t think I explicitly recognise this resonance when it is happening – it is more intuitive – a ‘gut’ feeling.  Still thinking…..

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Connecting through people’s people

How do we know which connections are important?  My recent trip to India has made me think about this in a number of ways.

All the connections I made on this trip have enriched my life, but I find myself thinking about the homestay we stayed in, in Olavipe, Kerala towards the end of our trip. This was a unique experience, where the family home which has been occupied by family members for 120 years and lived in by six generations, now makes four of its eight bedrooms available for guests. On one wall of the family home has been drawn an extensive family tree. Although the family is now dispersed and there is some concern about whether there is anyone in the next generation who will be willing  to maintain the family home, the family keep in touch with each other, wherever they might be all across the world by email – and yet whilst there was a computer in the family office, the computer was nowhere near as much in evidence in the Parayil home ‘Thekkanatt’ as it is in our home.

Staying at ‘Thekkanatt’ is really like staying with a family. The homestay is managed by two brothers and one of their wives. This was not like a hotel. The family entertained their visitors. We had meals together, long chats on the veranda, trips to the village and round the estate.  I asked the oldest brother how they coped with having guests in their house all the time. He said that it worked well because his brother and his brother’s wife were people’s people. I knew exactly what he meant and it seemed to me that they were experts at connectivity. They were able to engage in conversation with all their guests, whether the conversation was about Indian politics, religion, clothes, arranged marriages, music, or the equivalents of these in other countries. They took photos of all their guests and these photos were posted up on boards in one area of their home. They took a real interest in their guests and were masters at drawing them out, asking unintrusive questions and following through on these questions. For the 5 nights we stayed with them never once did conversation falter and they had a wealth of experience and knowledge to share.

In addition to connecting with their guests from around the world, the family were actively concerned to remain connected to their village roots. The oldest brother explained that in the past village members had been loyal to the family in times of financial difficulty and now the family was trying to repay this by employing village members from 25 families to work on their estate and running monthly gatherings for the village old people and children at their home, arranging outings and so on.

On the connectivism course a number of people were interested in connectivity beyond technology – what it really means to be connected – what are the characteristics of a well connected person and so on. I wonder if being a people’s person sums it up.

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Jenny connected? -yes I think so

Reflecting on this whole experience, the first thing that occurs to me is that I did manage to get connected even if only temporarily. So I have taken the question mark out of the title of my blog. Connecting took quite a bit of persistence and I had to ‘go for it’. Public blogging is a new experience and I never really expected anyone to comment on my blog. But some people have - a sincere thank you to them for taking the time.

In addition I managed to stay the course for the full 12 weeks. Sometimes I did wonder why I was putting myself through this. The amount of time I was able to put in did drop towards the end. I think I can already say it was worth it, but it will be a while before I can say what I have learned.

Frustrations

That blogging doesn’t allow you to keep a record of where you have commented on others’ blogs. I know I have failed to follow through on some comments. Apologies to people who I have failed to respond to.

Having to miss some of the live sessions due to technical problems or other commitments. Listening to the recording is not the same. Twice I had Elluminate cut out on me to the point where I wasn’t able to follow the session. I don’t think we should ever forget that acccess will not be the same for all participants.

Not having the multi-tasking skills to be able to chat and listen in the live sessions. I can’t cope with parallel conversations going on at the same time. In the last session there was a conversation about George hitting a deer with his car at the same time as Stephen explaining something about the course. The deer conversation was so distracting that I can’t now remember what Stephen was talking about. Reminds me of cocktail parties, which I hate for this very reason – you always get pulled off to meet some new people just as you are getting into an interesting conversation with someone! Fortunately I don’t go to many cocktail parties these days!

Not feeling able to participate in the Moodle forums. I didn’t feel that I had anything to contribute.

Things to try out in the future

• Mike style video chats.
• Digital storytelling – Lisa style presentation, although I currently don’t have the technical skills
• Youtube video a la Wendy
• Matthias style Flash presentation – this would be a huge technical jump for me. Not sure if I would ever get there.
• Keith style blogging

…. and more – too much to mention

Surprises

Trolls. A new word for me. The first comment I received on my blog was from Catherine Fitzpatrick.  I was delighted and naively didn’t know what I was getting into. Within the blink of an eye I was being accused of ‘grooming’ which I always associate with paedophiles so that came as a bit of a shock!

The amount of emotion in the network. Despite protestations that connectivism and networks are about reason rather than emotion, many people seemed very emotional- even Stephen himself. Interesting that in this blog the posts that attracted the most attention were the ones about the affective side of learning in networks, e.g. the post about my mother’s connections.

The amount of posturing, hot air and pontification there has sometimes been in the Moodle forums. I appreciate that this is a very personal perspective and may simply be that a lot of it went over my head, but given that I don’t think that connectivism is fundamentally a difficult idea, why did so many people seem to want to make it incompresensible?

The reactions to Stephen’s demonstration of power. It really upset some people.

Stephen’s slapdown of Lisa in one live session, where he practically told her that if she couldn’t ‘hack it’ she should get another job. An amazing thing to say to someone who was arguably the ‘best’ student, or at  least the one that the ‘tutors’ seemed most intent on listening to.

A tendency towards evangelism in some parts and from some on the course.

Things I want to explore further

• The implications of learner autonomy
• To what extent students can negotiate their own curriculum
• What open assessment means
• Criteria for finding and working out who is worth listening to in a network
• The relationship between identity and learning
• Meaning making in a network
• Whether a course could ever really be true to the principles of connectivism as I understand them
• Aggregation. It was rather assumed that we would all know how to do this. I didn’t and I’m sure I missed a lot as a result.

Things that intrigue me

How many people were there on the periphery. Were they learning? How did they learn?

What implication does this have for the teacher, i.e. teaching ‘invisible’ people?

I think the evidence from this course is that for a lot of people being connected to the concepts alone is not enough. For many people learning is about being connected to people that they feel they know and can recognise, along with the reciprocity and responsiblity that that entails.

Things I have appreciated

George’s ability to explain things so clearly and his masterly presentations

Stephen and George’s huge generosity of spirit in making their materials freely available and opening up their course to the world

Dave’s moderating skills

Some excellent presentations – Valdis Krebs, Terry Anderson, Howard Rheingold, Nancy White

The generosity and kindness of many who have visited my blog and encouraged me with their comments. I have also received emails of encouragement. I don’t need to name people. I think you know who you are.

A big thank you to Stephen and George for the opportunity.  This post and these sentiments seem inadequate.  I’m sure there is a lot I have missed and I know there is a lot more I could say.

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Digital literacy

I am thinking about this because I attended a workshop this week on digitial literacies – a face-to-face workshop – run by ELESIG (e-learner experiences special interest group) and funded by JISC LLiDA project

Wikipedia defines digital literacy as:

the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and create information using digital technology. It involves a working knowledge of current high-technology, and an understanding of how it can be used. Digitally literate people can communicate and work more efficiently, especially with those who possess the same knowledge and skills.

It’s interesting that this definition seems to assume that if you have the ability to locate, organise, understand, evaluate and create information using digital technology, then you can communicate it. I think this connectivism course has shown that that there might be more to digital literacy than this.

What are the literacy skills of connectivity and are these simply digital literacy skills or do we need to make a distinction? This seems to be worth thinking about.

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‘All learning begins with a connection’

George has posted a useful summary of the course so far http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/?p=173 in which he says ‘All learning begins with a connection’, which has prompted me to consider the reasons why and the circumstances under which it might not be possible to make connections.

Robin Heyden has a post on her blog Stepping Stones about the personal qualities that might be needed to make connections, which brings up the interesting consideration of the introvert, the ‘lurker’ and the shy person and whether this particular personality type makes fewer or less effective connections. I suspect that their strength might be in being the ‘weak ties’. We musn’t forget too that people can be making conceptual connections as opposed to social connections.

Of course as is pointed out in the Moodle thread – Do networks cause the end of geography? - huge numbers of people around the world do not even have electricity, so that in itself would prevent digital connections – although I think we have established that you do not need to be online to be connected.

Then there are the people with disabilities - physical, mental or social – that might prevent effective learning connections from being made.

I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog that emotion and an ability to understand norms might also affect a person’s ability to make connections.

I haven’t yet got my head round how identity is linked to the ability to make connections. If we assume that identity is both influenced by the network and in turn influences the network, then what is the effect on identity of not making connections?

Still thinking…….

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The ‘how’ of connecting

I have been thinking quite a lot about the ‘how’ of connecting, rather than what connectivism means. I don’t really have any problems with accepting that knowledge is distributed across networks and that in order to access it we must learn to navigate the connections in the network.

The course so far would lead one to believe that in order to be well connected we all have to be very technologically aware, although George has said (it might have been Stephen) that we can be connected without technology. On this course, the list of places online that its possible to connect with people is quite extensive. I didn’t actually discover this list until last week, so apologies to Stephen and George for suggesting that a list was needed in my ‘Is this a course or something else post?’ .  (As an aside, I have always found it interesting in my own online teaching, that course participants don’t necessarily see the information you provide for them and here I have been doing the same thing!)

But What if learning technologists ruled the world?  This was a question recently raised by Prof Gilly Salmon.

I’m wondering about whether it’s necessary to be technically ‘on top’ to be well connected. I’m thinking about my 82 year old mother, who has never touched a computer in her life and who I consider to be a highly connected woman.

She has a life-time of connections behind her and now has a large number of ‘dead connections’ to quote Lisa Lane.

She has lived in and visited a number of countries in the world, so is globally connected, although she connects with these people mostly through her Christmas Card list which is about 10 times the size of mine.

She twice weekly plays golf and is connected with all the members of two golf clubs, and she also plays in invitation competitions in the south of the UK (she lives in Scotland) once a year.

She is a strong member of her church and is connected with all the parishioners.

She plays bridge once a week and is connected with all the bridge club players.

She walks her dog twice a day and connects with all the other dog walkers in the forest that is adjacent to her Scottish bungalow.

She ‘looks after’ her sister who is one year older than her, has Alzheimers and is in a home , so she is connected with many old folks in that home.

Finally she is connected with all her family, with my dead father’s family, in-laws (who are still alive) nieces, nephews and grandchildren and of course with me and my family. 

My mother is very well connected. In fact she is far better connected than me and it has nothing to do with a computer. It has to do with her as a person and her personality.

She is generous and open in spirit. When she moves house (which has done many times in her life), she doesn’t wait for people to connect with her, she invites them to her house and gives them a good meal and there’s always plenty to drink too! She is highly proactive. She is an avid letter writer. She goes out and joins clubs and makes friends. The last time she did this in a new environment she was over 70 years of age. She has lived in and visited many countries of the world and is tolerant of differences. She listens and tries to understand the younger generation.  She is always learning and exercises her body through golf and walking, and her mind through reading, bridge and doing crossword puzzles. She was brought up believing that ‘manners maketh man’ and would never knowingly be rude. She would never be a ‘troll’. A member of her community, who has since died, described my mother’s arrival into the area as being a ‘light in the darkness’.

Is this what connectivity means? Surely it must be more than computer connections. I wouldn’t talk to my mother about this course. She would think I was having a mental aberration!

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