My analysis here is admittedly first impressions and shallow ;-) What it seems to provide is a social networking for faculty, to find academics with common research interests, to browse by departments and roles.

The structure is a rigid tree. There is “universities” at the top that you scroll or navigate horizontally by name, departments underneath, followed by and orderly listing of people by roles, faculty in top, then post-docs, then…

I have a gut level negative response to an org chart structure which feels as 18th century as can be, and some of this in the midst of thinking about the discussions of networks and chaos theory in the ongoing Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course. Is a fixed tree really the forward looking network shape of academia? Is this the future looking way of thinking about academia?

And then beyond that, look at what “academia” is defined at the top search box…

Academia = universities only

There are no colleges in academic.edu; no community colleges, not art institutes, no research centers… Certainly no space for Stephen Downes or any other independent, un-affiliated educational researches who lacks the proper insignia and elbow patches to get in the tree..

So none of my former colleagues at the Maricopa Community Colleges who were actively engaged with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning are allowed inside. This was a program directly affiliated with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching — which I would consider as rather “academic”. Oh yes, because the Carnegie Foundation is not a University, does that mean its members cannot be part of the forest?

I guess one could simply add an organization as there is a link there. And there are some 6000+ academics sitting in their perches of tree branches. And maybe I am just taking cheap pot shots as someone obviously has put a lot of work into this site and concept.

But, to me, and who am I but a lowly Non-Academic.

Academia = universities only is a walled garden. No, not much a garden, it is a walled forest of sterile trees.

I like it better out here in the jungle. Where the wild things are.

Would you believe a dog ate my homework?

Despite my success at gaming the school system on high school and college (meant- learning how to take standardized tests well), I’ve become a sloppy lazy learner in my adult years. I have a lot of trouble with structured courses because… everything I have learned in my last 16 years on the ed tech field has been through what my teachers are going to call Connectivism- I learned what I needed, when I needed, from networked sources.

I did miss the first emails, overlooking I had to sign up to get them. I do like the version of resources Stephen has created with his tools, The Daily. There’s probably going to be too many ways to connect in the connectivism course. I see the giant list of discussion sin Moodle and think… do I hear water running outside? Is it dinner? So I am not going to try and draw some diagrams of key points, and to be honest, I am skimming the readings.

To be honest, the whole “is it a theory or not?” discussion is a bit of a yawner. Does it matter if we define it? Why are people so doggedly tied to a theory? Is one theory fit all? I kind of see useful bits across the spectrum. But the bickering back and forth, the battle to quote the most obscure academic reference, is, well for me… uninteresting.

I care more about what we do with all this.

At the same time, I have lived, worked, breathed in this connected space for as long as I have been in the field, and even a bit before that. I fully grok that the ways I learned, a lot of rote memorization of facts, is quite Victorian indeed. It was so important to know the capitals of 50 states (quick! What is the capital of North Dakota?), yet we are questioning whether it is more important to “know” that (which to me is imprinted in te recall area of my mind… Pierre, yes I remembered that I did not google it) or to “know how to get” that.

It’s a trivial example.

And yet, I am more interested in knowing or thinking about… how may times were captial cities placed somewhere unlikely between two rivals? I “know” (or think I do) this was the case in Arizona (Phoenix did not exist, but both Prescott and Tucson vied to be capitals) and Australia (Canberra was plunked down halway from Melbourne to Sydney).

And there is the interesting part to chew on. I have to acknowledge i work on a base of many things I have stuffed into my memory; ity does not always come from the cloud. So it cannot be all connectivism all the time. There is some foundation the ability to connect rides on.

So I don;t know where this all goes. I am doubtful of my own resilience to stay with a fixed pace course when there are so many networked things I have to dabble in. I’m already time challenged with leaving Wednesday night to stay on Phoenix, fly to San Francisco Thursday for meetings Friday, and then jump to China on Sunday.

Yes, the dog ate my homework this week and next.

Good dog.