To 'know' something is to be organized in a certain way, to exhibit patterns of connectivity. To 'learn' is to acquire certain patterns" (Downes, 2005 quoted at http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism_self-amused.htm )
People have a tendency to compartmentalize the facets of their life into organized patterns that are work related, home related, school related, social related, church related, etc. There cannot help but be some bleed over, say between home life and work life, or when we have a friend that is part of 2 or more of the environments. However, we generally we do not discuss all the details of work at a church function, or discuss our Facebook conversations with everyone at work. All the interesting snippets of knowledge we have gained, tend to stay in their designated section.
As shown in the George Siemens photo (2011, http://profesorbaker.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/feed-it-forward-share-cck11/), in Michelle's post below, Connectivism links those environments together to form new patterns. The Personal Learning Environments (PLE) becomes the connection points where the networks we have forged link together and makes it possible for knowledge to transfer from one group of experience patterns to another. Thus, the established patterns are altered by the acquisition of the transferred knowledge, and we grow by learning. This is true whether speaking of the learning process that occurs within the mind, or in the literal transfer of information from one person to another.
The Group work that this team will create during the rest of the semester is an example of the Connectivist PLE in action. Michelle, Teri, and I, each in a different part of the state, with entirely separate and different living and working environments, will be connecting the knowledge we have through our own experiences and PLEs to forge a new Network with this class, or Network Learning Environment (NLE). We will be utilizing each others individual strengths to create original works—and we will be learning from one another to make our weaker areas become strengths.
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