Monthly Archives: October 2019

What sets connectivism apart?

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A pile of turtles sunbathing on a log

In the maelstrom of seemingly unlimited learning theories, evaluating the defining characteristics of particular theories can help to determine the one most applicable to a given situation, or which have the broadest application to learning in general. As I considered the various readings on connectivism this week, one of the most striking assertions I saw was George Siemens’ statement that “In a networked world, the very manner of information that we acquire is worth exploring. The need to evaluate the worthiness of learning something is a meta-skill that is applied before learning itself begins.” (Siemens, 2005) In most previous learning models, increasing internally-held knowledge has typically been seen as the end goal of any learning activity. Connectivism counters that in today’s world, where people will encounter a never-ending progression of new situations and increased available knowledge, a lot of knowledge does not need to be internalized, merely accessible. The theory holds that being able to find relevant knowledge and ignore unhelpful input is likely to be a more useful skill set than memorizing new processes or facts that are likely to change frequently, or be pertinent only rarely. The theory doesn’t preclude the possibility that people can and will internalize certain learning that remains stable and germane to their life or work. It merely highlights the prevalence of tools that can store and retrieve facts that used to rely on individuals’ retaining them. Very few people remember a long list of phone numbers anymore. Instead, they usually have them programmed into phones and other devices. Simple cooking tasks like how to boil eggs, calculate measurement conversions, or substitute ingredients are quick and easy to find online, so many people look them up each time they need to do the task rather than devoting memory to the process.

In a workplace, last week’s procedures for a particular situation may have been updated as outside factors changed. In this case, remembering the older process too well may in fact interfere with using the new one correctly. Many organizations maintain an internal wiki or blog to store the most recent information. Users can check it to make sure they know the most current version. Learning then involves being able to find and correctly interpret the desired knowledge. Searchable email systems make that another viable system to disseminate information. When in doubt, a person can easily search for keywords about the topic, then use the time stamps to be sure they are using the correct version. In this case, a good subject line, and the ability to choose fruitful search keywords are far more important than memorizing new procedures. When seeking a novel solution to a problem, a good learner will pinpoint applicable information in the sea of facts and opinions available across a spectrum of fields that initially may or may not seem related to the subject at hand. With the assembled data, they can create a resolution for the current need and still remain ready to update anew when situation changes.  

Resources:

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. International Journal of Instructional Technology & Distance Learning, 2(1). Retrieved from: https://jotamac.typepad.com/jotamacs_weblog/files/Connectivism.pdf.

Social Media as Community Organizing

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I work in a small city of just under 30,000 people. In a lot of senses, it’s a bedroom community, as most people that live there commute to work in one of the much larger cities nearby. The city and residents pride themselves on a very strong sense of community, a vibrant downtown and excellent engagement in causes both local and global. As an example, within my workplace, we have nearly 300 active volunteers per year, which calculates out to an equivalent of approximately 1% of the city’s residents being active in the library, a rather impressive quantity, given that many other causes in town are also well-supported.

I have frequently observed the impact of social media on various causes and information-sharing in the city. I am aware of a minimum of three Facebook groups moderated by local citizens used to disseminate information, share opinions, publicize events, and elicit support for various causes. Various colleagues have joined them as an additional avenue to spread information about library offerings and have an eye on topics of local interest. I subscribe to one of the groups and can think of many times that I have seen its role in shaping public sentiment or garnering attendance for rallies, vigils, or City Council meetings.  It can be a dumping ground for people’s negative attitudes, complaints about traffic, bad manners, or local policies. However, it has also been used to get word out about local candidates and why they’re running, as well as campaign events for folks to learn more about them. I’ve seen organizers use it to get carpool arrangements started for more distant marches and rallies, and to share suggestions on how people can comment on upcoming legislation or potential City policies before they are voted on or enacted. Local hot topics include fracking, intergovernmental relations, and some of the local festivals. All of these have plenty of posts by people sharing their opinions with various levels of civility, and also give like-minded folks a place to hear about meetings or other gatherings where they can learn more about or further advance their causes.

We frequently think of social media being used to organize people that are geographically spread, and that is clearly a major impact it can have to unite people that may never meet. It’s interesting to see it also used to streamline communication for people that live in the same place and want to connect in person but may not know about their joint interests or local manifestations of those causes without the medium of these community stream-of-consciousness style conversations.

Who’s Pulling Your Strings?

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My fourth grade teacher was a novel experience for me in a lot of ways. He was my first male teacher and my first teacher to assign long-term projects. He taught a group of us to play guitar after school. As a first-year teacher assembling a classroom library from whatever he had at home that was remotely suitable for elementary students, he introduced me to several series and characters that I would otherwise not have met that early. (Thank you, Mr. Haas, for my enduring love of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Get Smart!) He helped our class write and compose two songs, and then record them in an actual studio. I presume that somewhere during that year, we covered the expected academic topics, as well, as we all seemed to be ready for fifth grade the following year.

"Are You Being Watched?" Sign
Sign at tiger exhibit, Denver Zoo

One of his most lasting impacts on my thought patterns was the unit we did on advertising. We looked at various strategies used for selling, including both what they looked like and why they worked. We were sent home to find examples of each and describe the components of the ads. I can’t say advertising doesn’t work on me, but I can say that I tend to notice and attempt to deconstruct its methods and goals more often than some folks I observe.  That unit was what caused a flash of recognition in me for Tristan Harris’ line, “what we don’t talk about is how the handful of people working at a handful of technology companies through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking today.” (Harris, 2017) There are plenty of methods of advertising, and the internet is not the only outlet. It’s just one of the most potent and omnipresent. With a relatively small number of individuals at the helm and making many of the decisions about what we see, how we see it, and whose viewpoints get heard, it’s still a good idea to have some idea about how our experience on the internet is curated and shaped before we even encounter it.  As I investigated the question, I encountered a 2015 multi-part report from MIT Technology Review, entitled “Persuasive Technology.”  It was their May/June 2015 Business Report section. In an article entitled “Technology and Persuasion,” (Byrnes, 2015,) the researcher describes methods to keep people hooked on a particular game by recognizing behaviors that might mean they are getting bored and responding to those, or how a corporate wellness provider group uses data and game designers to maintain engagement from the workforce at a higher level than previously achieved. The researcher also cited an ad firm’s use of tracking data to better choose more effective advertising for individual users. Another article entitled, “New Technologies Persuade in Old Ways,” (Anders, 2015) specifically called out some of the strategies that have been used in some form to guide people’s behavior since times long before the internet was a consideration. Anders described these strategies as: “reciprocity, likeability, authority, scarcity, consistency, and social proof.”(Anders, 2015) If you think about those for a few minutes, you will readily see them at work all around you. Most of us would rather buy from or participate with a company that we see as friendly to us and/or our causes. We like to follow people’s feeds that may respond to us and boost our profile. We readily follow other users’ or experts’ advice and reviews on products and services, and items that sell out or advertise a limited number of opportunities are catering to our need for things that we see as limited.

If you’re interested in how companies may be programming you, take a look at one of these articles, or some of the others in the edition. They all seem to be short and easily digested. What did you learn, and how will it affect your outlook or behavior moving forward?

Anders, G. (2015, March 23). New technologies persuade in old ways. MIT Technology Review, Volume 110, No. 3. Retrieved from: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/535831/new-technologies-persuade-in-old-ways/?set=535816.  

Byrnes, N. (2015, March 23). Technology and persuasion. MIT Technology Review, Volume 110, No. 3. Retrieved from: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/535826/technology-and-persuasion/?set=535816.  

TED. (2017, July 28). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day | Tristan Harris. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74amJRp730.

Some upsides of connection

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Hands clasped with interlocked fingers

An interesting juxtaposition recently happened for me between class work and my outside reading. I have been working my way through a pair of books that both explore human capabilities and roles in the current era as they relate to each other, machines, society, and the world. The books are Range: Why generalists triumph in a specialized world, by David Epstein and Thank you for being late: An optimist’s guide to thriving in the age of acceleration, by Thomas Friedman. Both are written from a more optimistic point of view than many other current releases, and both offered some different approaches to thinking about social media and its impact, among many other topics. Plenty has been written about the negative aspects of connectivity and social media, and many good points have been made regarding addictiveness and resource waste, destruction of focus, anxiety caused by comparison with others’ curated lives, and lack of real connection between people. These books highlighted some of the more positive effects that can also come about in the current world of connection. In Chapter 5 of his book, Friedman talks about some of the ways in which easy and fast communication is changing the world. His examples include the fact that when he wrote the book, 914 million people had at least one international connection on social media and at least 50 percent of Facebook users had at least one international friend. (Friedman, 2016) I will readily agree that many of these “friends” may not be close, but they do at least give us some more access to outside viewpoints. Through Facebook, I get to maintain some level of contact with cousins in Norway, in addition to friends in England and Peru. There is almost no chance I would stay in any form of contact with these people without social media, but with the connections, when they come to town (or the country) for a visit, we may choose to meet up and continue our social ties in person. Friedman also devotes a fair bit of space to a discussion on ways that internet and social media offer people in developing countries better access to education, new philosophies, and a new audience for their thoughts and problem-solving ideas. David Epstein’s book is largely about the benefits inherent in approaching learning and problem-solving from disparate angles and disciplines in order to arrive at novel solutions. In chapter 8, he highlights some crowdsourcing programs including Innocentive and Kaggle that pose questions on the internet, and ask for solutions. These solutions usually come from a wide range of areas of expertise, and typically arise from well outside the expected backgrounds. These programs work by giving a large number of people access and a sense of community to work on problems together, learning from each other, and making contributions within a specific context. These are a little beyond the typical realm of the social media landscape that most of us inhabit, but they are another form of personal learning network and social interaction across large gaps in distance and time. As Paul Miller pointed out in the video and article, while these tools can easily drive wedges between people and interfere with in-person contact, they can also be invaluable for organizing more contact between people and better communication, if we choose to use them in that way.     

Epstein, D. (2019) Range: Why generalists triumph in a specialized world. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.

Friedman, T. L. (2016) Thank you for being late: An optimist’s guide to thriving in the age of accelerations. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Miller, P. (2013, May) I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet. The Verge. Retrieved from: https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet.

Miller, P. (2013, September 13)A year offline, what I have learned. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=30&v=trVzyG4zFMU.