There were a couple of analogies that I really loved. I love analogies.
The fridge analogy was great. The outside of the fridge has lots of stuff on magnets and post-its--typically notes and photos and stuff. This is like commenting on people’s blogs, putting reminders in Remember the Milk, wikis, and the like. Then there’s the inside of the fridge which has all kinds of stuff in there for consumption. Some of the stuff is good and some of the stuff is either unhealthy or has gone bad. Sometimes you need to check with your peers, “Hey, does this milk smell bad to you?” Ultimately, you tend to avoid the yukky stuff.
The Borg analogy was also pretty good in that it points to the Hive Mind. What one drone learns, all drones learn. While there are some definite advantages of this and it reminds me of D. Dennett’s quote about a joined cognitive system. The downside is that indiscriminate consumers of the information could be misinformed by the unscrupulous participants out there.
Dr. Foreman's driving analogy was really descriptive in how navigating around all these wonderfully collaborative and user-generated content can be tricky. She said that it’s like people are learning how to drive while simultaniously trying to figure out how to get to their destination. Meanwhile, all the beginners on the road could, and more likely would, cause accidents.
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I've been using Remember the Milk for about a year and it's totally changed my professional / personal / education lives. I use it a lot to set reminders to check and comment on blogs for this course, along with all my other scheduling tasks. A big point of discussion we've been having is how do you force yourself to work with Web 2.0 when a lot of it is self-driven. I think everyone finds their own way to keep in the loop and actively participate.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy enough to sit in class (in a behaviorist classroom especially) and not really feel the need to participate, but this is integral to the success of a connectivist learning plan.