Now how do you make this open source and still pay the bills. One way would be to make the training content truly open like MIT. To recover costs, the manufacture or the training provider could charge for certification exam, access to mentors, discussion groups, and access the training equipment. So if certification credentials are import to the customer, then this model works.

or example, I have already explained how the customer can build dynamic content around their features, but a customer could also using Wiki-like features, go in and upload their system schematics, photos, maps, or IP addresses and then have the content repository publish a unique document for the requestor. The automotive industry is already moving in this direction creating unique user manuals for each customer based on the features selected at the time of purchase.

<p>I believe that the roles &nbsp;of the Instructional Designer and Teacher are changing and must change in the face of the ever-increasing onslaught of information every human being faces today.&nbsp; Those roles must merge into the Sharer, who shows new technologies and connections to information to others while always keeping in mind his/her own role as perpetual student.&nbsp;</p> <p>To do this, the Sharer must, at least in some respects, plant the environment for others, set up what may grow into connections and give opportunity for emergence in ways even the Sharer may not envision yet, but in a reasonably “safe” environment for exploration.</p>

The Teacher/Sharer, parents and student collaborate on ensuring that whatever method the student is using is assisting in wayfinding toward those goals.&nbsp; If more connections are made, so much the better.&nbsp; But along the path, like signposts, each of the connections (parents, Teacher/Sharers) and&nbsp;each tool (video, Second Life, writing, drawing, blog, podcast,&nbsp; etc.) used&nbsp;to connect&nbsp;to people&nbsp;will prompt the student for responses (dates, opinions, responses to readings) of the set curriculum, but framed in the context best suited for that student.&nbsp;A&nbsp;record of the waypoints shows how the student connected and which connections seemed to spark the most activity and best learning.&nbsp; If the student misses a certain number of waypoints, the direction of the connections is adjusted until success is achieved.

<img src="http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/images/socialfluency.jpg" title="" alt="social fluency" />

Change has to start with an identified need, not with a good idea. Generally, we only change when we must. Listen for needs.

Change, like great research, begins with asking important questions, and provoking respondents to self-change instead of trying to persuade or impose it.

Experiment. The best, profound changes come from masses of iterative learning and exploration of possibilities.

When you think of yourself as a learner, you begin to act as one, and suddenly all the potential of networks and online information begins to make sense

Once students get the hang of groups online, just like any mother bird, the teacher needs to slowly start pushing them out of the nest.&nbsp; And I do not mean anywhere near Middle School.&nbsp; Most of the students in a school will be ready for this kind of experience nearing High School, and I believe this age will slowly lower as time passes and this form of education becomes more common.

The process of moving the students forward from a group setting to a network will be required, so will an educator familiar with both.&nbsp; For this process to properly occur, curriculum will need to be specifically designed and implemented, taking into account, emerging technologies and student safety within an online environment.

Those of you who've taken political science know that all of human history in political science is the division between the individual and the state. Right? The person and the group, right? And these are the two divides. And the whole purpose of politics is to find some sort of accommodation for them or if you're Ayn Rand, to favor the individual and ignore the group.<br><br> And it seems to me that networks offers that middle way. Networks offers that path that isn't the individual and isn't the group, doesn't force you to choose between the individual and the group.

But more or less, a group is a collection of entities or members according to their nature or their feature or their properties or whatever, their essential nature, maybe, their accidental nature, maybe, whatever, but according to their nature. What defines a group is the quality the members possess in common and then the number of members in that group. Groups are about nature, they're about quality, they're about mass. They're about number. <br><br>A network, by contrast, is an association – I use that word very precisely – an association of entities or members where this association is facilitated or created by a set of connections between those entities. And if you say, "Well what is a connection?" A connection is merely some conduit along which a signal can run. Well, that clarified it, didn't it? What defines a network is the nature and the extent of this connectivity. The nature and the extent to which these individuals are connected together.

I want to change the system of assessment in schools because right now we have tests and things like that that are scrupulously fair, particularly distance learning where we outline the objectives the performance metrics and the outcomes and all of that. I want to scrap that system. I want testing to be done by at random by comments from your peers and other people and strangers based on no criteria whatsoever and applied unequally and unfairly.

Networks are almost defined by the opposite, defined by their diversity. A network thrives on diversity. It wouldn't be a network without diversity.

Internet technology that encourages diversity rather than conformity includes things like personal home pages or these days, blogs. I should add to this slide MySpace profiles and things like that, your account on Flickr. All of these things that allows the individual to express themselves rather than the individual being part of some larger entity.

So, connective knowledge is knowledge OF the connections that exist in the world. It is knowledge about how such connections are created, and what impact, or effect, such a system of connections has.

So we have two types of connective knowledge, the knowledge that we have OF networks, that we obtain by looking at networks, and knowledge that is created and stored BY networks in the world.<br><br>Summary: Connective knowledge is both:<br>- knowledge OF networks in the world<br>- knowledge obtained BY networks

Summary:<br><br>Active participation in the network:<br>- as a node in the network, by participating in society<br>- as a whole network, by perceiving with the brain (the neiural network)<br>Reflective participation in the network:<br>- by observing society as a whole<br>- by reflecting on our mental states and processes

However, nobody would assume that in order to know that wood one has to know exactly every tree, one by one, its shape, age and location. Every plant. Every leave of every plant. Every animal and where every animal is and what every animal is doing at any instant. Every stone. Every particle.

We argue that learning occurs in networks, and therefore, that the properties of successful networks are also the properties of successful learning environments. We don't 'apply' this in any strict sense - we would never force people to be connectivists. Indeed, within the learning environment, we believe there should be diversity; we believe people should be free to choose their own form of learning.

To me, <span style="font-style: italic;">far more</span> complex - and insightful - forms of reasoning are being created through the interplay among thousands, or millions, of individual content elements. Where each content element may by itself appear to be <span style="font-style: italic;">simple</span>, it is the interconnections between them that creates a much more complex, deep, and <span style="font-style: italic;">rich</span> tapestry of meaning, <span style="font-style: italic;">far more</span> than could be created merely using linguistic devices.

It is substantially <span style="font-style: italic;">harder</span> to work with the disorder and complexity we see within a connectivist network. Because linguistic (syntactical and semantical) descriptions of the concepts and entities in such a network just barely touch the surface, and students must therefore immerse themselves in the process of reasoning in such a system, rather than merely reading about it.

<p>Downes’ and Siemens’ discussions shed new light on fundamental concepts, such as rules versus patterns, complicated vs. complex, equivalence vs. similarity, and coping with ambiguity and uncertainty. And these consideration render many entrenched practices of the entire knowledge industry questionable.</p> <p>All these aspects have one thing in common: that they can be illustrated by the neuronal <strong>metaphor</strong>, the metaphor of a network with nodes and connections, where</p> <blockquote><p><em>“Not all connections are of equal strength in this metaphor”</em> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism_%28learning_theory%29">Wikipedia</a>)</p></blockquote>

So, connectivism and its neuronal connections metaphor, allow to distinguish more clearly between two types of knowledge, one of which is the more adequate one for coping with complexity and uncertainty: <em>connective</em> knowledge.