CCK11 Week 2 Thoughts and Notes

January 30, 2011

CCK11 Week 2 Thoughts and Notes

After all the best intentions for participation, it was a busy week last week, and CCK11 took a necessary back seat. Over the 12 weeks of the course, I’m sure this will happen again, so maybe that is motivation for deeper participation during the rest of the weeks.

Despite the busy-ness, I read the readings, scanned many of the blogs and discussions, and tried to make some sense of all of it. First, my notes from the readings:

Krebs’ “Social Network Analysis, A Brief Introduction” provided a great primer on SNA. I appreciate the diagram that served to illustrate the concepts of:

• Degree Centrality – number of direct connections
• Betweenness Centrality – ability to connect to hubs
• Closeness Centrality – shortest distance to other nodes
• Network Centrality – degree of stability

From Downes’ “Learning Networks: Theory and Practice”, I appreciate the Design Principles, cleverly alliterated for ease of memory:

• Decentralize – similar to Krebs’ Network Centrality
• Distribute – makes networks more efficient because they do not require concentrated effort to run
• Disintermediate – remove barriers between nodes
• Disaggregate – remove bundles (e.g. create learning objects vs. courses)
• Dis-integrate – example of applications being able to run on multiple platforms
• Democratize – each node decides for itself
• Dynamize – network is fluid
• Desegregate – learning integrated into life and work

In addition, the story of building a jet aircraft resonated with me, as Waldo did last week. The notion that even if one person knows his/her job extremely well, it’s only a piece of the structure, and must be part of that structure in order to be valuable or make sense.

Lakoff’s “Idea Framing, Metaphors, and Your Brain” made the point about frames being very ordinary, and learned very early on. He also spoke of how every word is defined in terms of a frame.

So…I think what I’m beginning to understand is this:

• Knowledge is distributed
• Networks facilitate the sharing of knowledge…they facilitate learning
• Decentralized networks are more stable. Distance to connections (shorter distance) is personally rewarding (the quicker I can get to knowledge, the better for me)
• Patterns exist in networks, whether human, digital, biological
• Our brains begin functioning in networks, connections, distribution, frames, etc at a very young age

Next week, I will continue to follow the readings and contributions, and plan to begin making a concept map. The examples shared so far are both motivating and intimidating, but I’ll focus on the motivation and will look forward to your contributions for improvement.

References

Downes, S. (2005, March 8). Learning Networks: Theory and Practice. Retrieved January 24, 2011, from Stephen’s Web: http://www.downes.ca/presentation/32

Krebs, V. (n.d.). Social Network Analysis, A Brief Introduction. Retrieved January 24, 2011, from orgnet.com: http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html

Lakoff, G. (n.d.). Idea Framing, Metaphors, and Your Brain. Retrieved January 24, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_CWBjyIERY&feature=player_embedded

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