C.O.N.N.E.C.T.E.D

What is connected learning and WIIFM?  Guess I’m getting old as I had to google what WIIFM stood for.  This week’s #youredustory topic is a little bit of an oxymoron as the whole notion of connected learning is all about sharing and socially constructing knowledge and WIIFM aka “whats in it for me” is the exact opposite of this.  To discover what WIIFM meant, I relied on the sharing of someone else.  Their sharing came without strings attached, without prompt but was born out of a willingness to give.  As Isaac Newton famously once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants”.  Connected learning is about the growth of perspective, the shining of light on learning from different angles, the co-creation of knowledge.  Knowledge is not a tangible product individually created and owned but as Kynan Robinson states in this post “it (knowledge) resides in the network.”  I agree and think all learning is connected.  If we remove connected from the question posed this week and ask ourselves the question again, it takes on a whole new meaning.  “What is learning and what’s in it for me?”  The richness of your learning is not about what you take but about what you are prepared to give.  I wrote a previous post about this which you can read here.  A “whats in it for me” attitude is an example of a fixed mindset and a blocker of continued learning.  You will still be a (connected) learner with this mindset but the richness of your network will be affected.