Tag Archive for 'networks'

CCK08: Week 4, or since when have we used networks for learning

Published
by
David Vidal
on October 5, 2008
in CCK08 Week 3 and CCK08 Week 4
. 13 Comments

During this week I’ve enjoyed a lot the reading of Siemens’ Brief history of networked learning. Althought I couldn’t follow the hole discussion, my impression was that this week has been a quiet one, but was usefull to reflect about the concept itself in its evolution. At the end, I think, we all agree that networked learning was always there, althought we hadn’t the model to understand it.

In my view, thinking about networks is very usefull, but only when we think from a dynamic perspective. Last week (Week 3) we discussed with Valdis Krebs different models of networks (distributed, centralized, terrorist ;),…) but from a static perspective, and for me it wasn’t useful at all… Not everybody agreed with me, but everytime I think on it I imagine that it’s like taking a picture of a brain and try to find how does it work just with that picture. Useless at all for our purpose.

Networks are understable just if you think under a dynamic perspective. Information travels between (throught?) the nodes, and they are available, more receptives… or not depending of the circumstances. This way, the static network becames an unpredictable system (an unpredictable network), like this:

Yes, I know that this model becomes predictible in two minutes looking at it, but it was just an example: it’s a model of the Game of life, a cellular automator devised by Conway that works just with a few rules and that can show how patterns in networks are essentialy unpredictable in macroestructures (just a computer can predit what will be the position of the points in, for example, 1500 steps). If you want to experiment it by yourself just take a look at cellular automator (be careful… it’s addictive).

Now imagine the same but with people instead of those coloured points… Now the network is even more unpredictable, and even more alive that what it seems to be… And I think that that’s the model from where we can start understanding how does a network works, introducing in addition other phenomena like chaos, rizomatic structures, entropy, etc…

A little bit more in spanish here.

CCK08: Week 3, the wood against the trees

Published
by
David Vidal
on September 26, 2008
in CCK08 Week 3
. 36 Comments

I have to admit that the tittle was a little bit sensationalist, but this was my feeling when Stephen and George started to puntualize their postures about the role of the networks in Connectivism. Actually, these differences started, I think, at the beginning of the second week, when we were discussing about the essence of knowledge.

I have to say that I’m ver happy with this disagreement. When we started the course there were some misunderstandings about what were we managing with in the Connectivism, and I think that the reason is here. Yes, knowledge and learning, but… what to learn?, how?, and, the most important: WHO?

If I’m not wrong, I think that I heard Stephen saying, in one of our meetings in the course, that knowledge was a property of networks, not humans… The knowledge is something that emerges in the networks, defined in a rude way, as connections between those famous learning things. In this sense we can understand that the knowledge resides in the connection, not in the individuals, and that the knowledge is not related in any way with meaning, sense or other logical or semantic concepts. That’s the reason because of I think that whatever can be a learning thing (computers, for instance, and even humans ;)): the main instance is the network that links the learning thing, and not the learning thing… The question here is why Downes says that is important the knowledge to be recognised by the learner thing… this is something that it’s not clear for me yet…

George’s point of view is more sensible, I think… (I realized I intuitively agreed with him taking a look to my week 1 mindmap) He is not focused in networks, but in the individuals that become networks. Both Stephen and George (I will talk about George’s point of view later in another post) recognize and define the knowledge because of the networks (they are essential), but, as they said today at Ustream, while one is focused in the wood’s connections the othes pays attention to the trees and how they connect.

Of course, hundred of consecuences are derived from both models (in epistemology, ontology, ethics, politics,…). And most are not compatible… But, what do you think? Trees or wood? Individuals or networks? What was before, the egg or the kichen?