I also have the same concern. I think connected learning is great for graduate students because they do not need a mentor to learn a course! However, the connected learning can be problematic when we use it for lower-level students without combining it with the traditional way of learning. I agree with Freddie, traditional education will never be replaced by connected learning but the combination of them will improve learning.

I’m in the same boat. I develop statistical models for spatial mark recapture studies in ecology. Actually, I think the situation is worse for you. There are several wildlife biologists and ecological statisticians who are interested in what I do, probably more so than warehouses.

I thoroughly enjoyed this post! One of the things that really stuck out for me was your discussion of how to use connected learning to better understand and treat affliction such as cancer. Initially, one would look to science for the answer–doctors, research, treatment, labs, etc. But you provide a reminder that there is always more than one solution to the problem. Something as devastating and troubling as cancer requires a multi-faceted approach to treat, learn about, and fight. I think the suggestions you provide are a great start. Connected learning is something that, I believe, will only continue to grow the longer we live in an inter-connected world. It can be frustrating sometimes when we run out of ideas or fresh approaches to tackle a problem, but it is refreshing to know that there are others with different skills and different perspectives who can find new and creative solutions. Let’s keep this up!

I work in a very small, math-heavy part of a very specific field. If I started a blog just about my research, I think I would be the only reader (I don’t think there are that many other people fascinated by the math behind distribution centers).

It seems that most of the successful academic blogs I see either talk a lot about academia in general (tenure, teaching, other non-research subjects) or have a research topic that interests the general populace, like the environment, nutrition, or new technology (I don’t think warehouses fall in that category).

I love the idea of Art Integration and would love to see it applied in engineering/physics curricula. Particularly within an undergraduate engineering curriculum, students are encouraged to consider problems in geometric ways and have to draw Free Body Diagrams, but those are boring. Useful, but boring. I’d love to see teachers engage students’ creativity in order to help them work their minds around the geometry of many of these problems.

Something else that the sciences desperately need is a better understanding of design in their scientific communication.Edward Tufte ( http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/ ) is a statistician who has written a series of 4 books on data visualization. (I got these for Christmas!) I would love to see graduate courses co-taught by artists and scientists about the design of scientific figures.

Thanks for sharing more information about connected learning! While the core value of connected learning is obvious, it is more difficult to apply it to different field of studies. For example, I think that to apply connected learning to engineering and politics could be very different. Therefore, how can we develop a specific method about connected learning in a specific field could also be interesting.

I do appreciate the blog/webpage as an outlet for creativity that you don’t really get to do much as a scientist! Hence, my pictures of rivers.

And, of course, the addition of blogs to more traditional forms of communication (talking in person, the telephone and e-mail more recently) increases the overall distribution of, and access to, information. Blogs may reach people that would not otherwise have the opportunity, for a variety of reasons, to sit down and talk with leading researchers in hydrology, for example. Alternative ways of communicating with and educating others (and ourselves) are certainly a positive! Just saying the old ways also work quite well…

I’ve found that in addition to curating the content that we send out, we need to curate the voices that we hear, particularly on Twitter. A couple years ago I rarely used Twitter because I followed about 12 Virginia Tech writers that all gave the same news and shared each others’ tweets. My feed was drowning in redundant content. I decided to take control of what I was reading and unfollowed a number of accounts and sought out academics on Twitter. Now it has become a wonderful place to hear new ideas and learn. To your example, event hashtags really provide a wonderful platform for discussion as well. They also handle that curating automatically.

I, too, was challenged by the readings on blogging and I’m really looking forward to engaging on my blog throughout the semester. I can’t wait to see the discussions that come up!

Not to be the solitary and definitive voice of the humanities, but rather as someone who is pursuing a career in the humanities and humanities education, I would argue that there is indeed quite a bit of content within the humanities. I’ve always seen the humanities as the conscience of academia, where the sciences are the mind, the humanities are the soul. But yes, political correctness is a double-edged sword, but if my understanding of at least this course–and by extension, the crux of the blogging argument–is correct, then the point is to elevate one’s content in order to not just occupy public space, but to make a contribution to the public knowledge. Blogging, and other inter-connected sites on the web, can absolutely be used for frivolous means. But in academia, the impetus is to produce something, to join the conversation. Blogging is about speaking to your niche and so much of academia rests on communication. The web allows us to bridge the gap between the individual and the public so as to create an ever-evolving academic community consistently engaged in discourse. I think, if that is the end goal, it is worth a shot.