Connectivism (Siemens, 2004), and other theories underpin learning in the digital age. It emphasizes that learning occurs through connections between people, and the newer digital technologies have opened up avenues for people to enhance learning. The webinar by Kay Oddone was mainly focused on Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). Perhaps the ONL itself is an example of a personal learning network.
In our PBL group, we discussed the benefits of collaborative learning from the perspective of both the learner and the teacher. We also discussed cooperation vs collaboration, and I found this video by John Spencer very interesting in illustrating the differences. In this regard, being an electrical and computer engineering, I can’t help but draw an analogy to how USB works, a technique known as differential signaling. The two wires in USB carry the same information, but with opposite polarities. The information gets corrupted by noise, which affects both the wires equally. At the receiver, the voltages on the two lines are subtracted, canceling out noise and amplifying the information signal. This is how it works for collaboration in an ideal world – strengths add up, weaknesses cancel.
We discussed some liberating structures very extensively as a means to have a structure in collaborative settings. I found some of those very interesting and will be adopting them in my courses. In particular, I was fascinated by the 1-2-4-ALL structure. Each individual is given one minute for deliberation. Then the topic is discussed in pairs for 2 minutes. Further, two such groups are combined into a group of 4 and the discussion continues for 4 minutes. Following this, everyone will come back to the main room and present their ideas for 5 minutes. It allows for individual, smaller group, medium group, and whole-cohort discussions in a very structured and time-bound manner while evolving a natural, organic consensus. It is also very suited for an online collaboration environment, for example, through Zoom.
We evaluated several other tools for presenting our work, such as Miro, Prezi, etc. Eventually, we chose Thinglink which is a pretty good tool to represent a variety of different materials such as audio, video, hyperlinks etc. I got the chance to experience Simpleshow, which I feel is a very easy-to-use and powerful tool to create short illustrative videos. A simpleshow video I created for 1-2-4-ALL is here.
