CCK09 has just started: The Iceberg of new learning enviroments

The Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Course has just started and I´m excited and overwhelmed at the same time. It´s only participants introducing themselves so far, but we can all see the level is  high, with lots of people from last year coming back for more. A unique chance to learn, share questions and try to answer them making the effort to view things from a different angle or… through different networks, right? I already have the vibrant feeling of being in front of the tip of an iceberg of immense dimensions.

When I was in third grade my teacher gave us a poem about a kid and a horse by Antonio Machado. It made me shiver and I let my imagination flow with it. The teacher, when she saw me “daydreaming”, came to me and said “Don´t daydream with the poem. Just tell me what the author is trying to tell us through this poem”. Somehow that sounded twistedly simple and I wasn´t going to be content, but I had to deal with many, many teachers after that who thought that way and didn´t know better.

Spain in particular is a country where students rarely raise their hands to ask questions, at least that´s the way it was some years ago and I hope it´s true that some things are changing. That´s not only through primary and secondary school but through college as well. All through college I had to struggle with the feeling that it was awkward to ask the teacher questions, or just to interrupt him to say I didn´t understand. I was surprised, shocked even when I saw how natural that is in the United States, how natural the dialogue between teacher and students.

So being part of a new learning enviroment (can we say “ecosystem”?) is pretty much a dream come true. If I can keep up with it and manage to take time “from under the stones” (Spanish idiom :) to live the experience to the fullest, then I´ll be diving around the iceberg.

This is George Siemens saying hi to all of us and explaining why he wants to do this again.