Module 4: Connectivism

When I moved overseas 6 years ago, my opportunities for professional development became quite scarce. Due to my geographic isolation and budgetary constraints, I found myself unable to attend professional conferences as I once had while living stateside. I turned to reading books, online articles, conversations with colleagues and an occasional class offered locally or online. My learning network looked like this:



I was feeling professionally isolated until one day when I found a particularly interesting podcast online. I began to subscribe to the weekly podcast called PD to Go. This podcast was primarily about using Smart Boards in the classroom. But each hour-long podcast also included highlights and tips about cutting edge technology. During one weeklong road trip during spring break, I listened to the podcasts that had been downloaded to my iPod and I took notes about all of the sites and technologies that sounded interesting to me. When I got home, I began joining and exploring the networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Ning and others. And so, the beginning of my digital learning network began. I chose people to follow on Twitter who are knowledgeable in the area of educational technology. I joined discussion boards, blogs and wikis. Now my learning is centered on my interests and allows me to explore to find the gaps in my own knowledge. I find myself grateful for social bookmarking sites like Delicious that allow me to save bookmarks and organize them for future use. I realize that each network has the potential to take me deeper into my interest and gives me the opportunity to see perspectives that I had never even considered. I am grateful for learning about Google Reader to help keep my massive network connections organized. I have moved from a one dimensional recipient of information to an interactive participant in a multidimensional interactive world. Here is what my network has evolved into over the last few years:



I have to admit that I am probably more of a lurker than a participant in many networks where I do not have an established relationship with the participants. That is probably just characteristic of me as a person and a learner. I would normally be the kind of learner who craves the face-to-face interactions and collaborative climate of getting to know my classmates in a traditional classroom, but the tools like Skype, Google Chat, Google Docs give me that immediate interaction that I enjoy. Because of the collaborative nature of these social networking technologies, it is not difficult to find answers to questions. I am comfortable asking “friends” within my networks or searching for answers on my own using search engines and tags in blogs and wikis. Though I know that I must use Google with caution, it is still my favorite search engine for finding the answers to questions. What a different experience education is at this time in my life as compared to my undergraduate days before computers, the internet and Web 2.0 technologies.