All The Young (Edu)Punks

So, as part of the ADED 4F35 course at Brock University, I had to articulate my personal teaching perspective. Of course, being a punk, and holding those idea(l)s closely, I had to tie educational theory into my personal life. Here’s the video. I was really unimpressed with the idea that my creative side (a huge part of who I am and the part of me that I most value) had to write an essay. Blah. Thankfully there was an option to do something “creative”. I didn’t do so well on the marking rubric for APA citation… but really does that stuff matter? I guess if I’m writing for publication… which I’m thinking I might do.

My Teaching Perspective Is Based on Who I Am from Jon Kruithof on Vimeo.

Not that anyone is particularly following me – couple of quick updates to shock people I guess.I know, I know, good blogging etiquette is to maintain contact, but when you have very little to say, is there a point to add to the chatter? I don’t suspect that it’s good to blog for blogging’s sake… yet that’s kind of what this post is. Conundrum wrapped in an enigma packaged in a problem, neh?

1. I hate that whatever edublogs did borked my ability to track information in Google Stats. It was a good way to discover what was going on, and make new contacts, read new insightful things… yeah. Bummer.

2. I’ve been slaving away at creating, compiling and documenting “stuff” on D2L, or Desire2Learn (for those who don’t follow LMS’s).

3. I did a presentation of “research” (and I use research in quotes only because there’s no real research going on, it’s pseudo-research where we plan our research but don’t execute it) using some Presentation Zen techniques and people were really blown away with it. Thank you Garr Reynolds. I tried to be conversational, or as conversational as the subject matter (student perceptions of multimedia instruction in an e-learning) would allow. I tried to get people involved with their experiences with my subject topic, which is a good engagement strategy regardless.

3a. On the same note, um and so are my enemy in public speaking. You’d think I’d have learned that after many years presenting and practicing presentations, I’d be able to consciously stop saying ummmm. Guess not. Maybe I’ll video capture myself and see how many times I do speak of mine enemies.

4. An interesting old concept popped up again. I was watching a newish documentary called “Punk’s Not Dead” which actually does a pretty convincing job of saying it’s underground (well, shocking). I’m waiting for the documentary that treats punk like Ken Burns did with jazz… there’s a depth there that can be mined for sure. Anyways, one of the arguments of the new school of punk, bands like Sum 41, My Chemical Romance and The Used is that they are quick to embrace corporate sponsorship which they feel can be co-opted and used to promote their message. This argument has been going since Bad Brains and Husker Du (and before them, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sham 69) signed to major labels.

A nice parrallel to edupunk, some of whom reject the Blackboard LMS model and distribute the learning across several free, open resources (Moodle, Pageflakes, RSS feeds, blogs).With that said, I think there’s a value to having a centralized point of entry. Is there an answer to the criticism? Well, sometime you have to work in a system; education is certainly a system. The end result of the system is what’s important, not necessarily the means.

5. When Mohawk decided to go with Desire2Learn, the other competitors were Blackboard and Angel. Funny how in hindsight, there really was only two competitors.

6. Even though I’ve been thinking about transferring this blog, resurrecting my other blog and adding a third blog about Hamilton punk and putting them all under one umbrella/domain, I still haven’t been overwhelmingly motivated to do so. Maybe in the Fall.

Heh, here I was believing that I could get away without blogging in my life. Anyways, my name is Jon and I work in some ways with e-learning (whatever that means…) at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario. I also teach web based technologies (searching techniques, Fireworks, XML) through Continuing Education at the college. The purpose of this blog is to collect my thoughts about Connectivism and the course that is being facilitated by Stephen Downs and George Siemens. Some of those thoughts will be required course work (like this introduction piece), some of them will be personal observations of what the course and the learning means to me.

At the college I assist professors using several different e-learning platforms, including First Class (known locally as FRED), Blackboard and Can8. I also dig up nuggets of information that might be useful to teachers using technology. As a student at Brock University in their Bachelor of Education (Adult Education) course, I’ve used Sakai and WebCT so far, and I’m sure I’ll use many more as we move forward.

On a personal level, I think I’ve situated myself well for this e-learning thing – I graduated from Sheridan College with a diploma in Media Arts and continued my education at Mohawk College for computer programming. Both taught me skills that I use today and most days, so I guess that is the definition of a useful education. I also chuckle at the notion of edupunk, as I’ve been involved in punk rock for most of my adolescent (and adult – whatever that is!) life.

I’m interested in the Connectivism course as I’m interested in the ways people learn. Aside from that, I’m very intrigued by the decentralized notion of learning – Paolo Freire’s beliefs certainly come into play here – and the relationship between connectivism, common knowledge and authorities in subject matter.

My requirements for a successful course is a difficult question to answer – certainly gaining knowledge and a greater understanding of connectivism is the ultimate goal. Some lively discussion will have to take place; I’ll certainly be interested to see how the course plays out as the sheer numbers seem staggering to me.