OLDaily is a feast of delights.
This morning it brought a link to Kevin Stranack‘s post, Guerrilla Connectivism: 10 Tips for Taking Control of your Education.
In his post, Kevin observes:
We, as students, … can take control of our own education by following a few connectivist-inspired tips.
I found all tips helpful but liked points 4 and 5 in particular.
“4. Help others. Connectivist courses often start with sessions to help orient students to this new way of learning. To replicate this, offer to spend the first lunch break helping people setup a twitter account or reviewing how it works. Point them to some of the great introductory resources developed by other connectivist educators. Connectivist learning can be disorienting for those new to it, and does require a basic understanding of some of the core technologies like twitter, social bookmarking, and blogging. A bit of guidance can make a big difference to the success of the learning community.
5. Establish a Google Community. Yet another free service from Google, this allows you to quickly and easily establish a connectivist, student-run web space for the course. Remember to tell everyone where to find it. Use twitter, but also let people know face to face. Try not to be exclusionary, but instead keep all information open and accessible to everyone in the course.”
Kevin’s post appears at a time when I am thinking a lot about cMOOCs and supporting personal learning environments. I have been looking at a range of Google+ opportunities and am trying to learn more about connecting communities. I found Ronnie Bincer’s recorded Hangout particularly helpful.
By coincidence a lead from my Paper.Li feed to me to an excellent resource shared by Richard Millington. He has an ultimate list of resources for How To Build An Online Community. The list is remarkable and I am delighted I have found it.
On my searches this morning (courtesy of Richard Byrne) I bumped into Edcanvas and that has started me off on another path of discovery about transparent sharing.
I really enjoyed Kevin’s energy and the importance he attached to student engagement in connectivist approaches. I start my own teaching next week and hope to support Kevin’s guerrilla tactics. But does that mean they cease to be guerrilla tactics … if they are adopted by teachers?
After posting this I am off to read a New York Times article on open access and credit, a post on micro-credentials and Doug Belshaw‘s posts about his Open Badges meetings.
Photo Credit
Network Diagram (Steve Ryan, CC BY-SA 2.0)
