I can’t make up my mind whether I’m a visitor or resident. As Dave White says in his presentation its not a dichotomy – but rather a duality (which is very much Wenger’s approach to communities of practice). In his presentation Dave makes some comments that I have been thinking about:

Visitors leave no trace – my feeling is that this is not possible. Maybe they hope to leave no trace. I can see that they could leave an absolutely minimal trace, but not no trace. It’s a bit like when someone briefly enters a meeting and leaves quickly – their leaving and absence still affects the meeting. In relation to this, I believe that ‘lurkers’ can affect what is going on through their absence.

Visitors worry about identity theft – I would say that visitors might worry about identity full stop, particularly if the visitors are novices. In fact isn’t it possible that visitors may be visitors not by choice but because they are novices in the online environment.

Residents try to keep visible by continually feeding the machine – have residents subjected themselves to the ‘tyranny of participation?’

Remaining visible is important for residents – Why? What is in it for them, particularly if a lot of what they post is banal? Isn’t being perceived of as banal counterproductive?

The word ‘nebulous’ can be used to describe residents – Dave didn’t talk about this and I’m not sure what this means.

A resident is less likely to have their own blog – this seems to contradict the research that John, Roy and I did where we equated residency (we called this a ‘home’) to a blog. This brings up the complexity of the way in which we use language and metaphors to describe the way in which people learn and interact online.

The visitor is no more or less technically adept than the resident – this depends on whether the visitor is a visitor by choice

Visitors take an individual approach to working online – I don’t see an individual approach or autonomy as the preserve of visitors. The question of autonomy is complex and not easy to understand or unpick.

Lots to think about. I’m looking forward to the session tonight – Elluminate Conference

I am posting this invitation on behalf of Roy Williams, Dave White, Sui Fai John Mak and Gus Goncalves.

Please join us

You are invited to join us in the Elluminate conference on Wednesday 4th November at 20:00 GMT to discuss the title question with Dave White from Oxford University.

The Link for the conference is: Elluminate Conference

You can also find it in the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK09) course.

We will be holding a conversation about Dave White’s vandr (visitors and residents) model. We are all trying to understand the new networked learning media, as users, but also as academics, teachers, trainers, and researchers. So we need frameworks to describe what’s going on, and that’s what this conference is all about: none of us has the final answers, and I guess most of us find networked learning is so interesting precisely because there are no final answers.

We have asked Dave to take us through an overview of some of the key points of his model. Then we will get some feedback on how you see yourself, in terms of his model. After that we will ask Dave to take us into more of the detail. Interruptions are welcome.

Networking

We have set up a twitter site (vandrcck09) where you can add additional comments, outside the chat channel in Elluminate. We are trying to make space for more substantial responses to the conversation in Elluminate, and it looks like the only way to do so is to write a longer comment in a forum post, or blog, and then post a tweet in ‘vandrcc09′, which includes a link to your blog or the forum. We’ll see if it works.

Models and Resources

Please feel free to use the vandr twitter site, from now on, to post ideas and links to aspects of the vandr model, or any other models and research, that you find useful to describe what goes on in networked learning.

I have just watched a TV programme which has moved me to make this post after quite a long absence from blogging. The programme (on BBC 2 – UK – with the title Classic Goldie) was the story of  a DJ who cannot read music, who composes an orchestral piece for the BBC proms, accompanied by the 70 str0ng London Philharmonic Choir. This one hour programme has prompted me to blog again after quite a long gap. Why?

The programme moved me in a number of ways. I could relate to it, perhaps because my second son is a music technologist – full of dreams like Goldie – but yet to realise his potential. I didn’t record the programme and now wonder whether I will be able to find it again to show my son who is about to start on a music technology degree.

I could relate to Goldie’s emotion when he saw his work, efforts and dreams being translated into practice.

There was resonance in the immense feelings of self-doubt, concerns about self-worth and levels of expertise, expressed by Goldie.

There was also resonance in the power of music. I could understand that the power of music lies in melody, but I also remembered the book I read in my ‘youth’ about Stockhausen and the effect that that had on me in relation to my understanding of creativity.

All this makes me wonder again what it is that causes a connection. It is not technology. In this instance it was my past experience, my prior knowledge of the subject ( albeit limited, although I do sing in a choir which explains my interest), a close family connection – my son who I love -, my empathy with Goldie as a novice working with experts and the emotion he experienced, and finally my conversations with my colleague and online friend Matthias, who first raised for me the question of how and why we recognise resonance in online connections.

From this I might now think that online connections/renonance are related to past experience, current emotions, levels of interest and expertise, empathy, mutual interests and mutual respect.

Lots to think about!

PS  Twitter would just not do what I need for this post!

I don’t think I have the skills needed for being well connected online (and probably offline too)! So for example, I cannot cope with the chat stream and listening to the speakers at the same time on Ustream. Today was frustrating from that point of view. The speakers were interesting, rambling a bit from time to time, not to mention disagreeing, but nevertheless lots worth listening too. But I kept getting distracted by the chat. I think this is because I have begun to recognise people in the chat area and if you can filter through the simple greetings etc. then there are interesting comments and questions. I was trying to identify people I would like to follow up/connect to.

So despite being a woman (they do say women are good at multi-tasking – in my case this is an erroneous assumption), I can’t multi-task to this extent. I’m not very good at skim reading (slow reader!) or filtering information quickly. I also don’t have basic technical skills – like I’m just becoming aware that there must be a way of indicating that you are replying  (in the chat area) to a named person (those @ signs) – but I don’t know how to do this. So apologies to people who responded to me by name and didn’t get a response back. I just haven’t worked out the system yet!

Finally I don’t seem to have sussed how to ask a question that will get answered. I have now raised at least one question on at least two separate occasions (either Elluminate or Ustream) – all my questions are completely overlooked. I don’t mind the question not being answered as the questions that are answered are worth talking about - but I’m interested in why some questions get answered and others are overlooked, apart from the obvious answer that some questions will be of better quality than others. What concerns me a bit is that it might be that questions from ‘recognised’ people get answered, although I’m willing to consider that the ‘recognised’ people might also be asking the ‘best’ questions. So another skill that’s needed is raising appropriate questions – if you want to get into any sort of dialogue.

So here in this post I have identified at least a few practical skills that are needed to succeed in a technologically connected world and there are many more. Are the people who don’t have these skills going to be left behind, or is there going to be something equivalent to the inclusive curriculum, where members of the network take responsibility for inducting others into the network and helping them to develop their skills?

I think a community would do this – but probably not a network. And for me, this might be the big stumbling block with connectivism. For me, learning is more often than not a social responsibility.

Another series of posts to come back to.

The key point in it for me is: ‘..learners are expected to be able to manage complex and rapidly changing environments.’

This raises the question of whether this is a realistic expectation. What about all those people who simply will not be able to – who have learning disabilities and so on? Who need motivation?

Is this going to lead to another divide? We already have the ‘digital divide’ and one of the papers (can’t remember which one now) mentioned that Web 2.0 technologies could lead to a cultural divide. Will we also have a connections divide?

Here is the abstract of an interesting article by Barry Wellman

Much thinking about digital cities is in terms of community groups. Yet, the world is composed of social networks and not of groups. This papertraces how communities have changed from densely-knit “Little Boxes” (densely-knit, linking people door-to-door) to “Glocalized” networks (sparselyknitbut with clusters, linking households both locally and globally) to“Networked Individualism” (sparsely -knit, linking individuals with little regardto space). The transformation affects design considerations for computer systems that would support digital cities.

This has set me thinking about whether it is possible to have a ‘community’ with the notion of networked individualism. According to some research done by Wellman – ‘the more people that are online, the less their sense of belonging to an online community.’ That feels a bit like this course.

He also writes – ‘With fuzzy network boundaries, individual autonomy and agency become more important, as each person becomes the responsible operator of her own personal network’.

Some questions arising from this are:

• To what extent are we responsible for other people’s learning as well as our own?
• Will networked learning lead to increased individual feelings of isolation?