Bill Kerr’s Challenge to Connectivism

I’m struggling to complete my reading assignments for George and Stephen’s online course on Connectivism and Connected Knowledge. I can’t let go of a great opportunity to learn but I sense I’m not going to be getting enough sleep over the coming twelve weeks.

The final reading for the first week, Bill Kerr’s challenge to connectivism, got me engaged, and that’s the seat of learning, so I thank him in spite of the fact that I find his criticism shallow and largely irrelevant. I’ll boldface Kerr’s remarks to separate them from my opinions.

simply put, there are other theories around about distributed cognition, so why do we need a new one?

George’s Connectivism combines older theories and new realities to come up with an explanation of learning that fits with today’s realities. Most other theories address yesterday. Connectivism would not be diminished even if Vygotsky got there first.

assertion: “the pipe is more important than the contents (simply because content changes rapidly)” The immediate rejoinder here is that content is important too. And then some will argue, reasonably, that some content is more important than other content. This leads into a discussion of the nature of knowledge (content), is there some knowledge that is more fundamental than other knowledge, what is the difference b/w a new idea of substance and a fad? This is a discussion which has to be had. The slogan leads into this discussion but does not provide an answer to it.

This is a specious argument. Content and context do not exist without one another; they are sides of the same coin. We could spend years trying to answer “What is truth?” The fact that George hasn’t answered it for us doesn’t invalidate Connectivism.

assertion: “the half life of knowledge is declining.” …I would say that at any given time some knowledge is more durable and important than other knowledge – and that “half life of knowledge” arguments obscures that fact. This term is provocative and good a discussion starter but needs more analysis. I am not arguing that there is such a concept as “fundamental knowledge” but that at a given time some knowledge is more important than other knowledge. What sort of knowledge?

Generalities always obscure detail. (You can drown in a river that’s an average of 6″ deep.) Of course, there are foundation elements of knowledge which change at a glacial pace if at all. Reading and writing, critical thinking, and the scientific method aren’t going out of style. However, that’s not why an electrical engineer who doesn’t continue her professional development is out of date and out of business in three or four years. This course is a demonstration that educators thirst for new approaches; I’ll suggest that’s because there are heaps of new things to learn and similar measures of things to unlearn. Good Heavens, how can anyone fail to notice that human progress is accelerating at a mind-boggling pace?

the most important issue is not teachers who haven’t woken up to the potential of the internet yet, it’s those who are blocking the process higher up the chain of control…. what is really needed is for those who want to change education to form a more politically aware movement, something that teachers have been reluctant to do in the past

Agreed. This strikes me as an argument in favor of connectivism, not against it.

Tagged as: CCK08