CCK08 – Hmm. After reading, and re-reading the articles from last week to sum up my thoughts on the dialogue so far and what I imagine is the dialogue to come, I have to say that I see a few parrallels between Connectivism and Anarcho-syndicalism. For those of you who don’t know me a little side bar is in order:
I grew up a punk. I’m still a punk, although I do clean up awfully well, as most people say when they see me in more professional attire. Deep down, I believe in a form of anarchy, although I recognize the impractical nature of it. I do think doing it yourself is the best way, and love the music. I also spent much of my youth trying to explain the concept of anarchy as not one of molotov cocktails and chaos, but of taking responsibility for one’s actions. I haven’t studied anarchism academically, and it’s been at least fifteen years since I’ve cracked any Bakunin or Proudhon, so I may be rusty at drawing some parallels (and certainly don’t have any specific examples to cross-reference readings with). With that caveat here goes.
Connectivism is like Anarcho-syndicalism in that the central authority rests with the individual.The individual decides what to do with the information, which of their networks to access, which of the multitudes of information bits to integrate, pass on or reject.
Connectivism (unlike Behaviourism – which the authority figure then says what is good information) also does not impose a hierarchical value on the members of the network, so the value of what is transmitted in the network is given and taken carte blanche. That leaves an awful lot of power in the hands of the individual to decide what is good information. Of course that speaks to the issue of truth, which as a couple of threads in the course area on Moodle has brought up, is contextual. The reality of my truth is not the same as yours, or my friends or my co-workers.
Connectivism values critical thinking highly – this is the only way to make sense of the vast array of information that is pushed through the network each second.