CLmooc BC Affinity Conversations

The CLmooc Book Club

Join in participating with the #Clmooc Affinity Online Book Club: see Kevin Hodgson’s post on the many entry points to this study. True to connected learning, there’s many ways to join and participate. Please join us.

Invitations

Yesterday’s Affinity Book Club post on Invitations invited lots of discussion and resulted in several resources.

What do you think? Could schools

1. invite more connected learning with outside affinity groups?
2. be more inviting towards learning through student interests?
3. have an available curriculum accessed and learned through the student’s agency rather than the direction of the school?

Although not a proponent of home schooling, I agree with many of John Holt’s ideas on education, including:

Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts. That means the right to decide for ourselves how we will explore the world around us, think about our own and other persons’ experiences, and find and make the meaning of our own lives.

John Holt Instead of Education
See also
http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/the-critical-instructional-design-of-digital-pedagogy-lab/

We’re slowly understanding now the potential harm to school curriculum and student learning that a focus on standardized test results has on students. A focus on building knowledge is more important — and building knowledge by engaging student interests and promoting student voice increases motivation to participate and learn.

In our twitter chat, we continued to wonder IF schools could be more like or connect better with Affinity Networks. Here are screenshots to part of the conversation [1 and 2]:

Consider the above questions while reading the tweets:

What would you add to the conversation — should we encourage more connections to student interests and affinity networks? How might that change our educational paradigm?

Just think of the possibilities for learning!

Resources

More resources to consider the possibilities and opportunities for engaging all learners:

Verena Roberts

Verena Robert‘s Research:

Influence of Social Media on Online Education

Figured Worlds and Education

Rocky View Schools Digital Literacy

Open Learning Design Intervention  OLDI

See also this post: Affinity School 2 Open Education

Daniel Bassill

Daniel Bassill’s shared resources:

Learning to Learn

Daniel’s Hashtag cMap

Join in the conversation!

Kevin Hodgson shares the many ways to join in our conversation– true to open and connected learning:  All Entry Points Lead to Learning

Thanks to Kevin for sending us on an inquiry into “Is it possible?” Thanks to Daniel, Sarah, and Verena for adding insights to our journey into Affinity Online.

We are curious and exploring on our own to find meaning in our worlds.

Kevin keeps us all in focus with this YouTube shared with us and Verena — enjoy: