There is much to be said about the three major concepts addressed in Module 1 of this course. We were asked to explore Communities of Practice, Personal Learning Networks, and connectivism, all three concepts relate to one another while maintaing their distinct features that make them individual entities.
I believe that the most powerful learning comes when meaningful connections are made between the content being studied and one’s personal life. Thus, I attempted to develop a creative expression of these three concepts by using my love for coaching cross country and track.
Personal learning networks are the most individualized of the three concepts. A singular personal establishes relationships with individuals, maintaing various positions, to share information, ideas, and expert knowledge in a given domain of interest (Burt, 2014). The network feature comes to life in that PLNs “gather a heterogeneous circle of people, distributed across different groups and places, and connected to the individual with connections of varying degrees of strengths” (Granovetter, 1983). In my visual representation this is represented by a single athlete. The functionality and success of an athlete depends on their own personalized study of the sport, work ethic, and the community of support to which they choose to surround themselves with.
Communities of Practice (CoP) is the second concept to which was addressed in Module 1. This concept involves three major characteristics: domain, the shared connection based on a common interest; the community; a group of individuals that interact with each other through collaborative activities; and the practice, common experiences and resources to take on similar problems (Wenger). The key to a successful CoP is maintaing a similar degree of commitment to the common interest shared by the group and shared experience over time (Eckert). In alignment with my creative expression, the community of practice would be PLNs of coaches and athletes (who also act as teammates). These groups all work hand-in-hand to build a successful team. Each individual has a distinct role that supports the achievement of the common goal, to win as a team. It takes daily practices over the course of months (shared experiences) to compete at a high level and win a team title (shared interest)
Lastly, is the theory of connectivism which brings everything together. Connectivism roots itself in the principle understanding that decisions will be “based on rapidly altering foundations” (Siemens 2005). Moreover, connectivism, simplified, is the idea that individuals engage in learning processes that hold real world application via various resources and contacts to which valuable information can be extracted to create new learning that builds lasting knowledge applicable to a diverse number of circumstances. Connectivism in my illustration is represented by the championship trophy. Championships are birthed when multiple nodes and networks of information about the sport can come together. A key feature of conenctivism is that information is always evolving and thus to learn you must know how to make connections with the evolvement of information. Team strategies and workouts are always changing based on course conditions, quality of equipment, educational studies, and other nodes of information.
References
Burt, R. (2011, June 14). Step 1: What is a PLN? Retrieved June 29, 2015, from http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/pln-challenge-1-what-the-heck-is-a-pln/
Eckert, P. (2006). Communities of Practice. In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Retrieved June 30, 2015, from http://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/eckert2006.pdf
Mark Granovetter, 1983. “The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited,” Sociological Theory, volume 1, pp. 201–233.
Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. Retrieved June 30, 2015, from Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning.
Wenger, E. (2009). Communities of Practice. Information Science and Knowledge Management. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-85424-1
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