Frances Bell’s Blog

I have just read for the second time George Siemens post on Teaching as transparent learning.  It’s an interesting post that stresses the importance of engagement by novices and experts.
The idea of ‘experts’ talking through their learning made me think about the notion of expertise in an online course.  Even where the teacher/facilitator is an [...]

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Here is a reworked version of my conclusions from a paper on connectivism that I recently submitted to a conference.  I can’t publish whole paper prior to review and (hopefully) publication at web site but I would be interested in comments on my findings.  Related work is under CCK08 category on this blog.
Cormier   identified as [...]

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This story of a school library dispensing with the fiction librarian post filled me with sadness.  The reason given was  ‘a move towards the relocation and redistribution of non-fiction and fiction resources in the light of the new developments in a virtual-learning environment and interactive learning’.  The thought that budget was being diverted to the [...]

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How can education change in a connected world?
This blog post was in answer to a question on the CCK08 forum, but I enjoyed writing it so much, I thought that I would post it here as well.
Illich identified three purposes of a good education system:

“it should provide all who want to learn with access [...]

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Stephen Downes posted a reply to my blog post http://francesbell.com/2008/11/09/cck08-is-connectivism-a-learning-network/ at http://connect.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=44375.  I tried to reply there but my comment was not accepted so I am posting it here, hoping it gets picked up automatically.
I was very grateful for Stephen’s comments, as there is plenty still be ironed out (from my persective at least).  I [...]

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