I find fascinating concerns such as expressed by Dave Cormier to the effect that the PLE fosters the idea of people setting out apart from others and learning on their own. It's especially interesting in the context of what I am observing in more recent connectivist courses, such as #PLENK2010, where there is not the sort of effort being directed toward helping others as I would like to see. Some people observed that the course was not for people new to the material, but my thinking was that more experienced people should be creating introductory content to help people new to the material, that this is how they learn. And, on reflection, it leads me to think that it is traditional learning that leads to a selfishness in learning, as you are encouraged to focus only on your own learning (even when you are working in groups) and not on helping other people (that's "teacher's job"). That's a wrong view of learning. And so I think the narrowness of interest Cormier observes is not an artifact of connectivist learning, but an artifact of traditional learning being imported into the connectivist course.
Keith Hamon writes, "Learning as simply a personal activity or as simply a group activity misses the complex reality of learning. Though it can be helpful to look at either the individual or the group, learning is the interplay of the individual with her environment. The individual learns from the environment, and the environment learns from the individual. In the interplay, they shape and reshape each other, learn and relearn from each other, teach and reteach each other." This is well stated. We need to keep this in mind.
Keith Hamon writes, "Learning as simply a personal activity or as simply a group activity misses the complex reality of learning. Though it can be helpful to look at either the individual or the group, learning is the interplay of the individual with her environment. The individual learns from the environment, and the environment learns from the individual. In the interplay, they shape and reshape each other, learn and relearn from each other, teach and reteach each other." This is well stated. We need to keep this in mind.
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