Week 5: Topic 1 - Connected Educator

Since we already posted our thoughts on the first two chapters, I'm not going to really go over them again because there is plenty of things to go over in the other three chapters we have read thus far in our books. Keeping things simple and easy by going in order I'll start with chapter three.

"Connect learning is a process of learning, unlearning, and then relearning as we participate in networks and communities" - Just like this line from the book.

A major point to this chapter is the idea of construct knowledge for, in, and of practice. My take on the three my be a little skewed but I like things simple and no all fluffed up for academic purpose. Knowledge for practice is the passive learning by reading studies, blogs, articles, books and other resources which can further your knowledge in a field. Knowledge in practice is easy enough to understand because its all about trying things out that you learned and learning from it. Knowledge of practice is something everyone should do, reflect. You reflect on what you learned, how you applied it and how you can change things for the better. Connect learners take charge of their own learning and collaboration helps in reflection and practice thus those construct are put into good use.

The young always seem to have their own little culture about them. One driven by technology and instant communication. Not a bad thing to have in a culture. Chapter four is all about the collaborative culture. The authors put forth two idea in the beginning of the chapter  Congeniality and Collegiality, the latter being the more focused on in a collaborative online learning environment. In order to have either you need to have good standing relationships which are built on trust. Trust isn't impossible to find in online communities but you have to willing to do trust. Once you got trust you can start working together. The chapter also goes over phases of collaboration, but I really didn't like that section because it all depends on the community and how they function together. Its possible for some communities to just fore go some of their phases.

The fifth chapter is about using tools to support connect learning. This chapter was a bit more fun to go through. There was some fun little places to visit. We use Diigo in class, and I have found it wonderful tool for many different learning experiences and just general bookmarking. I also had a look at delicious but it reminded me of tumblr which uses tags to find things which I find a little to distracting. Blogs, microblogs, wikispaces, RSS feeds and all those fun things we use in class. We get to do a podcast this week which should be interesting because I have never done one before. I have used teachertube for some of my other classes and it was really useful. I think I might have spent more time playing with the tools then reading the chapter, but that isn't a bad thing.