{"id":5591,"date":"2025-06-23T02:57:51","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T09:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/2025\/06\/23\/weekly-reflection-4-connectivism\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T02:57:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T09:57:51","slug":"weekly-reflection-4-connectivism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/2025\/06\/23\/weekly-reflection-4-connectivism\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Reflection #4 \u2013 Connectivism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image by Alex Shuper on Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

For this week\u2019s reflection, I decided to write about the theory of connectivism. Before this course, I had never heard of this before. After reading the 2020 chapter \u201cConnectivism\u201d from 25 Years of Edtech<\/em>, I was struck by the explanation of connectivism in practice. In the book, it is stated that connectivism \u201cis characterized by four major types of activity: aggregation, in which learners access and curate a wide range of resources; relation, in which learners are encouraged to relate content to their earlier experiences; creation, in which learners are encouraged to create an artifact of their own, such as a blog post, using tools of their choosing; and sharing, in which learners share their work with others in the network.\u201d Immediately what came to mind was our blog post assignment. Each week, I pull together what I\u2019ve learned from the readings and class discussions (aggregation), connect it to my own life or experiences (relation), write a blog post (creation), and then post it for others to read (sharing). <\/p>\n

This made me realize that I\u2019ve actually been engaging in connectivist learning all along, without even knowing it. I always thought of these blog posts as a personal reflection task, but I can now see that they also function as part of a broader networked learning process. The act of writing and sharing these posts isn\u2019t just about summarizing what I\u2019ve learned, it\u2019s also about making connections, building meaning, and contributing to a shared learning space with my peers.<\/p>\n

Understanding connectivism has also helped me see the value in less traditional, more open-ended assignments. At first, I was definitely not a fan of the lack of a rigid structure in our blog tasks, and the assignment felt a little unclear to me. Although I still prefer assignments with a little bit more structure and a little bit less freedom, I can definitely appreciate the benefit of being given the freedom to reflect in a way that\u2019s meaningful to me, and write about what I want to write about. As a future educator, I can absolutely see the benefits of encouraging students to create and share their own work in ways that allow for personal connections and collaboration, and I will try to provide as many opportunities for them to do this as I can!<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Weller, M. (2020). \u201cChapter 17 \u2013 2010 Connectivism.\u201d 25 Years of Edtech. AU Press.\u00a0https:\/\/read.aupress.ca\/read\/25-years-of-ed-tech\/section\/198057f5-1a3e-4436-a4b8-c6e1a3e0bd69#ch17<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image by Alex Shuper on Unsplash For this week\u2019s reflection, I decided to write about the theory of connectivism. Before this course, I had never heard of this before. After reading the 2020 chapter \u201cConnectivism\u201d from 25 Years of Edtech,… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci339\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}