A comment by David Elliot on my last post yielded a train of thought that I think is worth discussing. Initially I had posted the following thoughts as a reply to his comment, but the thought occurred that this is tangential enough from the original post that it warrants a dedicated one in its own right.
David raises the topic of Personal Learning Networks versus Virtual Learning Environments, and asks “How can we bring institutions back into the Connectivism picture as foci of collaboration within the larger PLN?”
[This is perhaps …

Jeffrey Keefer said to me today: “You seem to have a large and wide network yourself. How do you foster that?”
The short answer to this is: “I actively seek out my network contacts and go where they go” or as Robert Scoble has said before: “I go where the conversations are.”
The longer explanation, as you might expect, is more involved that that.
Background
I’ve heard a couple of CCK08 students state that they had implemented Connectivism in practice long before they even knew what it was, or that it had a formal …

A post I read yesterday really got me to thinking about curriculum-based instruction versus self-directed learning models.  This post is a reflective writing exercise that seeks to clarify my philosophies on the subject in my own head.
In “Downes on Learning and Web 2.0“, Diego Leal reflects on the following video in which Stephen Downes argues 3 key points:

You are at the center of your own personal learning network;
To gain from self-directed learning you must be self-directed;
These principles should guide how we teach as well as how we …