Frances Bell’s Blog

I posted the following as an answer to Ken Anderson in this thread at CCK08 http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1060#p6572

What I meant by seeing power as relational was that:

• rather than describing power relations between A and B (I was thinking people here) as A has power over B
• we could describe these relations by saying how each of A and B affect and are affected by the (power) relations between them

(Health warning; although I was once a secondary school Maths teacher, my experience is a little out of date)

So for example with students and teachers in a hypothetical class

T(eacher) instructs students that Pi = 3.142 when teaching a class on finding the area of a circle.
S(tudent )1 accepts that and uses that value in his calculation. He accepts the knowledge of Pi from the teacher without question
S2 spends a little time researching Pi and discovers that 3.142 is an approximation. In her homework answers, she explains why she has chosen to use a value of Pi to 10 decimal places, whilst still recognising that her answer is still an approximation, but a better one than she would have achieved by using 3.142.

Scenario A
T gives slightly higher mark to S1 than S2. S1 and S2 compare notes, and both decide that T has missed an opportunity to share something interesting with the class. T goes down in estimation of S1 and S2, who are getting confirmed in their view that school maths is pretty boring. S2 thinks that she won’t bother to research around the subject in future but use her internet skills for learning about stuff within her control.

Scenario B
T gives top marks to S1 and S2, and uses the opportunity to highlight S2’s research to the class, going on to talk about the provisional nature of knowledge, the value of estimation (depending on context of problem) and the opportunity for students to challenge working assumptions. All students have opportunity to extend on basic knowledge from instruction, they see resourceful behaviour being recognised, and S2’s work is validate by T, as well as being enjoyable in its own right. T is seen (by some students at least) as someone who recognises that knowledge is open to question, and is not threatened by challenges from students.

A relational view of power would go beyond the question:
In which scenario does T have more power over the students?
The question wouldn’t really make sense. A better question might be:
In which scenario do students have more effective agency? If student goals were passing standard tests, the answer might be Scenario A. If student goals were learning and having fun, then maybe B.
It’s pretty complicated thinking about knowledge, power, agency and context, and for these scenarios the important power relations may go way beyond the classroom context - institution, parents, government, etc.

CCK08
In this, only my second reflective blog post in 7 weeks, I want to draw out some threads from the information I have absorbed, the discussion in which I have engaged on CCK08, Moodle forums and others’ blogs. It was always going to be well-nigh impossible, particularly at this very busy period of the academic year,  to keep track of the readings and personal contribution, and so my engagement has been a combination of targeted reading and serendipitous finding of pearls, and the irritant grains of sand that may yet become pearls.

Pearls!

Originally uploaded by tuija

Entities

The use of learning as a verb rather than as a noun has already been noted http://www.situativity.org/archives/000141.html  and http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/Situating_Connectivism.  It has struck me that in discussion on the CCK08 forums, the word network is usually a noun, casting network as an entity rather than an activity.  I found the discussion on Groups and networks to be quite frustrating.  In Stephen Downes’ talk http://www.downes.ca/post/42521, groups and networks are presented as a dualism (either/or)  with value-laden attributes to each.  If we were thinking about behaviours (group behaviour and networking) we could think about a duality of practice (think participation and reification in Wenger).  Some of the discussion in this thread made me recall my thoughts on the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ nature of this terminology - a term like group was interpreted very differently by participants in CCK08. To me the term group is fairly generic term (having meaning in contrast to ‘individual’) that operates as a gateway to the various ways that individuals organise themselves- institutions, clubs, networks, etc.  The overarching term ‘group’ is  quite as hard to pin down as that other ‘fluffy’ term community.  Interestingly, a difference that I had observed between Stephen Downes’ and George Siemens’ views of groups and networks in particular, and epistemology of knowledge in general, was confirmed in George’s mid course review video.

This got me thinking about an excellent chapter I read in a book called ‘Data and Reality’ many years ago.

“So, at bottom, we come to this duality. In an absolute sense, there is no singular objective reality. But we can share a common enough view of it for most of our working purposes, so that reality does appear to be objective and stable.

But the chances of achieving such a shared view become poorer when we try to encompass broader purposes, and to involve more people. This is precisely why the question is becoming more relevant today: the thrust of technology is to foster interaction among greater numbers of people, and to integrate processes into monoliths serving wider and wider purposes. It is in this environment that discrepancies in fundamental assumptions will become increasingly exposed.” http://www.bkent.net/Doc/darxrp.htm#Chapter12

These ideas are relevant to CCK08.  Although participants share a common interest in connectivism, they have wide range of fundamental assumptions.  The discrepancies in these assumptions are exposed on the forums and it can be hard work to achieve dialogue where participants are open to changes in thinking.

Practices

A more productive way forward than thinking about networks as entities may be to examine the practices of people within their own networks.  It could be argued that this privileges human nodes over non-human nodes but I am more interested in learners than objects (oops my social constructivism is showing).  Looking at a learner’s own network, we would see them navigate in and traverse between networks-as-entities.  In this perspective the learner’s and others’  interpretation of the quality of nodes and connections becomes as or more important than the general frequency of connections.

Trying to participate in the Connectivism extravaganza along side attendance at ALT-C 2008 was a bit manic.  I have dodged about, skimming. occasionally diving into the Moodle discussion, missing the synchronous events, doing the readings late.
So what can I do in this blog post?  A partial reflection on my very partial participation, looking at three fairly random ideas
1. How to choose
Describing my participation as ‘partial’ is apt.  Confronted with the torrent of (mainly) words, I have adopted a grazing approach to reading and contributing.  That means my participation is partial in that I only look at part of what’s there, and partial in that I use my preferences/prejudices/chance to choose what I look at (someone I know, someone who looks ‘interesting’, what George and Stephen have to say).
2. Noise and Style
The Introductions thread started in a very friendly fashion, with international contributions, civility and charm.  I really felt that an inclusive yet challenging atmosphere was developing. In the Moodle forums, people started to engage in exploring their understandings of connectivism.  Then Catherine Fitzpatrick’s posts began to pop up with increasing frequency.  From what I can gather Catherine (Prokofy in SL) has been the centre of controversy elsewhere e.g. Linden Blogs.  Her posts were very interesting in that they expressed her views articulately and with force.  She attracted many responses, even a blog post from Stephen Downes.  What interested me was the impact of her dialogic style on her contribution to the discussion.  She was certainly critiquing connectivism (which I welcome) but her tendency to label (”techno-communism”) and misinterpret others really got in the way of any critical engagement with ideas.  For example (and there are many), Catherine made the statement “You act as if the university needs radical change” in the comment thread of Stephen Downes post (see link above).  I wondered who the ‘you’ was and how Catherine formed this view.  I didn’t spend long wondering this, though.   I quickly formed the resolution to avoid responding to her.

I do wonder what impact she is having on the participation of others.  It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

3. Visibility of networks

This quote from Bill Kerr’s critique caught my eye “Network based learning theories might be more visible because the network is more visible”.  I am not quite sure what it means but the visibility of knowledge networks is certainly something that I hope we look at in the coming weeks.  My initial thoughts are that the visibility of a network of knowledge might make it more useful (just as the visibility of a social network makes it more useful to more people) in that it focuses our attention on it.  On the other hand, this may privilege visible (usually online) networks at the expense of other, valuable yet less visible networks (e.g. ideas expressed in books not yet online).  This may be an argument for digitising but what do we do in the mean time?

I am going to post later about the conference but I wanted to get out the word that you still have time to vote on our Digital Divide.  Not surprisingly, and despite our best efforts the activity was limited to those associated with ALT-C 2008 (but including some who submitted ahead of the workshop).  Having said that,  serious fun was had by all.

Even if you missed it, you can still participate (up until midnight 14 September) by viewing the Slams and voting on your favourite http://digdivslam.wetpaint.com/page/View+Slams+and+vote+for+your+favourite (you might need to register, but it’s worth it as we’ll send out notifications of winners on Monday).
Currently in the lead is Digital Divide = Digital Boxes.
You can catch a flavour of it by looking at some of the video clips. My favourite clips are of the groups working – people happily engaged in thinking, talking, creating about the Digital Divide http://digdivslam.wetpaint.com/page/At+the+ALT-C+2008+workshop.

The picture (courtesy of Sam Easterby Smith) is of the workshop winners, James Clay and the Slam Virgins getting their digital dishcloth (knitted by my own fair hands). Overall winners get global recognition and a badge they can put on their web sites.

 I like to think that, even as I write this, James is cleaning his kitchen with that functional, meaningful and somehow beautiful artefact, the black and white hand-knitted dishcloth.

Have you got something to say about the Digital Divide? Now is your chance.

We would like to invite participation in a Digital Divide Slam in association with a workshop at ALT-C 2008.

If you aren’t attending the conference, you are welcome to participate as an individual or small group.  Can you produce a message about the Digital Divide (even better if it’s from your own experience) that can be viewed online in a few minutes (or less)?  Check out how you can do this at our wiki at http://digdivslam.wetpaint.com/  Deadline for submissions is Wednesday 10 September.

If you are attending the conference, you can come to the workshop and create your slams there. Those attending a similar workshop last year had great fun.  You might like to check out the wiki anyway.

 From Thursday 11 - Sunday 14 September, you can vote.  Why not register with the wiki at http://digdivslam.wetpaint.com, and we’ll send you a reminder?