This document discusses the social nature of technology, cognition, learning, and knowledge. Some key points made include: - Technology reflects social values and ideologies and shapes new realities - Learning is a social and networked phenomenon enabled by tools and connections between people - Individual knowledge is only possible due to social engagement and participation - New technologies provide opportunities for new connections and relationships between people

1. Socializing Teaching and Learning Presented to: Canadian Network for Innovation in Education George Siemens June 18, 2008 Learning Technologies Centre www.umanitoba.ca/learning_technologies

4. Technology

5. Is not neutral

6. And it’s not “only a tool”

7. Cognition and mind as social phenomenon: - Mind/self created through social participation - Practices/tools/language are social constructions - Power fashions practices/tools Garrison, 1995, p. 737

8. “ designed, accessed, interpreted, and used to further purposes that embody social values” Bruce & Hogan, 1998

9. “ every technology has a philosophy which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in what it makes us do with our bodies, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards” Postman, 1998

10. Technology as Faustian bargain What are we getting? What are we giving?

11. Consider...

13. Technology is an ideology a carrier of affordances a disrupter an enabler a reflector of mindsets/world views a shaper of new realities

15. “ What we have here is a transition from a stable, settled world of knowledge produced by authority/authors, to a world of instability, flux, of knowledge produced by the individual...” Institute of Education, London, 2007

16. “ by creating space and place, we create ourselves” Cannatella, 2007, p. 632

17. Co-evolution of individual and related network Lazer, 2000

18. Fifth estate: reshaping “communicative powers of individuals and groups” W. H. Dutton, Oxford, 2007

19. Complexification of knowledge reduces individual capacity to apprehend its unity

20. “ The major responsibility of education is to arm every single person for the vital combat of lucidity” ...New problem: access to info, skills to organize info Morin, p 12, 13, 1999

21. Participatory sensemaking De Jaegher, Di Paolo, 2007

22. New media adds new opportunities for connections/relations, enacting latent ties Haythornthwaite, 2002

23. Social activity system...heedful interrelating Weick & Roberts, 1993

24. “ Gossip, people-curiosity, and small talk...are in essence the human version of social grooming” Zufekci, 2008

26. Shall we chat?

27. What are the implications for teaching/learning?

28. Learning is... Contextual Situational Tool-mediated Social Networked Carries DNA of previous ideologies

29. Individual knowledge possible due to social practices of engagement Tsoukas, 1996

30. What do different technologies do?

31. Connect

32. 1. Access

34. 2. Presence

36. 3. Expression

38. 4. Creation

40. 5. Interaction/co-creation

42. 6. Aggregate our fragmentation

44. ...and while we’re here..

45. Open Online Course: Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (Sept, 08) http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/

46. Websites and Newsletters www.elearnspace.org www.knowingknowledge.com www.connectivism.ca http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wordpress/ gsiemens AT elearnspace DOT org