September 23, 2009
CCK09 – from knowledge to networks
Posted by heli under network | Tags: community, knowledge |[3] Comments
I have continued my path by reading again Anna Sfard’s and Etienne Wenger’s writings and I see many important steps forward. Learning by participation and communities of practice have been meaningful concepts for me. It was nice to meet my old thoughts again and reorganize my mind (what does that mean?) The concept ‘brokering’ opened my eyes (my mind?) some years ago. Borderlines are interesting places: for instance I have come from an old-science-university to an university of applied sciences and I am most interested in practical problems, theories are not enough any more. So my place is nowhere in RL and I greatly enjoy to participate this open global course. I need this for prevailing decent motivation in my daily work (thanks to my friend who said this in CCK-Moodle).
It is obvious that we have to proceed from great amount of knowledge to ways for dealing with it, complex situations in complex world. One human being cannot anymore be an expert and it is better or even necessary to build up networks and projects. And so we have done. My attitude to projects is confused, a project means more ‘a joke’ than ‘a good job’. All projects have not worked as they should and there are unrealistic plays which no one believes in (I hope you can follow my simple English).
But I still believe in networks, why? My networks are honest, I build them for myself and they are open. I love the decentralization of networks, it means dynamics and freedom to act in different ways and think whatever. I agree with the importance of diversity. Diversity is Ok when I can choose my ways, participate or not. I do not like griefers or trolls in internet, they have wrong diversity in their disturbance actions
Communities of practice (Wenger 1998, Cambridge university) are described as voluntary groups in a work place, people who have same interests. In spite of this, communities of practice seem to have both good and bad elements in their action. All that is said aloud is not knowledge or true in any way, shared ignorance is not better than one person’s ignorance. I can see the same phenomenom in networks.
My first step in microblogging happened in a case that I followed a conference about research methods and I was very eager to follow what people told, I was in my workplace and could not participate in the conference. But I soon understood that I had waited too much: those who commented by microblogging where newbies and didn’t know much about scientific methods, it was their first time. This opened my eyes that microblogging (and blogging) and networks are as vulnerable as all human interactions are. Trust is needed but it shouldn’t be blind.
September 28th, 2009 at 6:03 am
Hi Heli,
I resonate with your views on Communities of Practice. The good and bad elements, the group think and the shared ignorance, that often happened in COP without us realising it. It could also happen in networks, as you said, when people became the echo chameber.
So, I share your feelings in the networks too, when I didn’t feel comfortable in those sharing with mass . “microblogging (and blogging) and networks are as vulnerable as all human interactions are. Trust is needed but it shouldn’t be blind.” So true.
I often resorted to reflection with a few trusted connections, rather than many by now. So, it is not easy for me to try the microblogging even after half a year of trying – too many spammers especially in the twitters. However, I found it easier to work on facebook, where I didn’t have to meet strangers.
Thanks Heli for your valuable insights. Happy to learn from you again this time.
John
[Reply]
September 28th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Hi John,thanks for your comment!
I thought that you are very skillful in all social media vehicles, nice to her you have problems, too. I only went to Twitter but I don’t know how to use it, and why. Our Finnish microblog is more clear, it has channels to follow. So we have something to learn
Heli
[Reply]
September 29th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Hi Heli,
Thanks for your comments. I am still learning about those media. For people who like short message, Twitter could be good for sharing. I found it useful for conference updates, as a back channel; asking a question, sharing of some interesting quotes, URLs, blogs direction or my feelings. Have the use of twitters been exaggerated? May be it could be more useful for those aggregators, marketeers, and those who like to socialise – the extroverts to increase their connections at a short time. However, I found it distracting sometimes, especially if the tweets are based on trivial matters, or just spams. Your mention of channel surely help – especially in facebook.
Great to learn and share with you.
John
[Reply]