This has been a fascinating week at CCK08. The second Elluminate session on Wednesday brought George, Stephen and Dave together. I read Dave’s paper before the session.
I am fortunate that this session takes place at 10 a.m. in Australia on Thursday morning. I have the whole day to reflect on the discussion. I am a keen gardener and the idea of a rhizome is of great interest! I discovered the Wikipedia stub on rhizome (philosophy) and the existence of a creative arts project.
I followed up the CCK08 tag on Technorati and noted the 5708 references to Connectivism and 1143 references to Networked Learning at del.icio.us (as of 20 September 2008).

Technorati graphic (accessed 20 September 2008)
It may be pushing the language of the first two weeks too far but I am intrigued by the links between the two elements air and earth. We are a digitally connected network that has a presence through our local rootedness. I have started to explore the contestability of connectivism in some of the blog posts but have spent a great deal of time thinking. I am very relaxed about the epistemological debate going on and realise that each of us will have a perspective grounded in our biography.
What a remarkable group of people on this course. It is Spring time here in Mongarlowe. I think the course is like my garden … blossoming through difference and sameness.

I missed the Ustream discussions on Friday so I ended my first week of the course with a need to catch up (today I am the 784th viewer of the broadcast)! Over the weekend I reflected on Week 1 in CCK08.
My first day at primary school was in September 1956. Week 1 of CCK08 ignited my memories of that first day fifty-two years and a few weeks ago (there were twenty fellow pupils that day). These memories helped me ground my reading for Week 2 and to think about the personal dimensions of learning.  It was fascinating to read Stephen’s post and George’s post about Week 1 (2000+ pupils).
I have read all three readings for Week 2 today. The last sentence I read was in the paper by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia (1996) on rethinking learning. My take out message for this week is part of that final sentence:

… so it’s not necessarily that I have everything, that I have all the information. but that I’m able to piece things in that make sense …

In my sense making, Stephen’s 2006 paper on Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge and George’s (2006) Shifting have helped me piece some things together. In my rethinking of epistemology I have been contemplating emergence and better fit theories.
My thinking has been clarified by using an analogy. I was fortunate to be in Barcelona in July this year and whilst dining out in a first floor restaurant I watched someone try to park a car in a space that appeared too small for the car. The driver thought otherwise and this is what he achieved:

The manoeuvre required the driver to nudge the car in front forward and the car behind backward. In this way, the driver created a space but to get out of the situation he created each of the other two cars had a direct relationship with the car that arrived in the small space. The original manoeuvre was not consensual and involved an invasion of space.
I wonder if some theories do have a better fit than others and occupy an expansive epistemological space? The arrogance of theorising occurs for me when an a priori assumption is made that a theory is the answer to all sense making.
I am attracted to connectivism because of its resonance with earlier parts of my learning journey. I have been interested in Max Weber’s verstehen and George Kelly’s personal construct psychology. Both Weber and Kelly argued for the on-going development of a theory open to challenge and replacement. I think both saw theory as an heuristic approach to knowing.
In my car parking analogy, I believe connectivism has chosen to park in a much bigger space in a clear part of the street. Even when you park in a very open space some people think you have taken their parking spot and demand that you move. Sometimes they even put notes under your windscreen wiper to let you know just how angry they are!
Week 2’s readings and the Barcelona episode have encouraged me to think much more about epistemology’s better fit and the openness connectivism offers in this regard. I do believe that theory is fallible in social contexts and that a potential theory of everything can have modesty and humility. My reading of connectivism is that it is invitational rather than prescriptive.
I am excited by connectivism’s emergence and incandescence. I am delighted that connectivism is contestable and a reflexive part of its own transformation.

I have taken an opportunity to read Maarten de Laat‘s (2006) thesis on Networked Learning. I enjoyed the range of Maarten’s work and must revisit the detail in each of the chapters. Chapter 3 has a discussion of theory and praxis and I read with interest Maarten’s discussion of Lawrence Stenhouse’s work.

(Lawrence Stenhouse, Donald Schon and Eliot Eisner had an enormous impact on my thinking in the 1980s. They are my antecedents of connected, open communities of practice able to reflect on and transform learning).
I noted too Maarten’s observations about networks, communities and learning:

• Networked learning provides the opportunity to gain more active control and take ownership over learning agenda.
• Networked learning environments provide open learning spaces where people are able to develop meaningful interactions between each other.
• Networked learning happens spontaneously between people who decide to share their interests.
• it is the communities that people build that open the doors for ‘new’ learners to enter their knowledge domain, take part in their conversations and learn about their practice.
• It is the community that keeps knowledge alive and accessible over a longer period of time, through
  fostering meaningful lasting relationships.
• Communities are social learning spaces.

I hope to read more of the Additional readings! My next stop is re-reading Stephen’s Buntine Oration.

I am trying not to read ahead of the course!
Today I worked through the Background reading for Week 1 and luxuriated in the range of ideas available for reflection. (… to learn is to practice and reflect)
I found myself pondering about second order approaches and thought about some of my early initiation to philosophy at university in the early 1970s. Historical materialism was much debated then and considerable time was spent contemplating Marx’s (1845) Theses on Feuerbach.
Thesis VIII is:
“All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.”
Thesis XI is:
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”
By the time I got to LSE to do a part-time Masters’ course in Sociology in 1980 there was a postmodern turn occurring.
Each decade lays claim to distinctiveness, originality and uniqueness.
I am one of those people for whom connectivism resonnates. The background reading for Week 1 prompted me to think as much about ontology as epistemology.
I am left pondering (on a beautiful afternoon in rural NSW, Australia) if our discussions are about who we are as much as about epistemological foundations and networks of knowing.

I am saving up the Additional Reading for later in the week!