Who Are the Good Informants in your Network?, Connectivism CCK08

From the thread CCK08: What is connectivism, I would like to feature the discussion about deciding who are the “good informants” in your learning network:

Re: What is connectivism
by Jenni Parker – Monday, 8 September 2008, 08:00 AM

Hi Kathryn

..however my thoughts on how the connectivism model is associated with the concept of knowledge is that everyone you connect with is an “informant”. The problem will be deciding which are “good” informants.

Re: What is connectivism – cross-cultural issues
by Kayeri Akweks – Monday, 8 September 2008, 04:02 PM

It seems that what we are all doing each day throughout our lives is trying to analyze and decide upon “good” informants.

Re: What is connectivism – cross-cultural issues
by Stephen Downes – Tuesday, 9 September 2008, 07:01 AM

I think that you can spend too much time looking for ‘good’ informants.

It’s better, I think, to draw a parallel with ‘finding a friend’ rather than ‘finding a reliable source of information’. You are looking for a communications partner, not an encyclopedia.

I think that most people would serve just fine as a connection. It has to do with affinity and comfort – can you talk to the person. Sure, just as in friends, there are things to avoid – deadbeats, liars, cheats – but you wouldn’t select your friends based on how authoritative they are, and neither should you so choose your connections.

Be Yourself, from Stephen’s Web :

What makes online communication work is the realization that, at the other end of that lifeless terminal, is a living and breathing human being. The only way to enable people to understand you is to allow them to sympathize with you, to get to know you, to feel empathy for you. Comprehension has as much to do with feeling as it does with cognition.

Learning and communicating are not merely acts of sending content over a wire. They are about engaging in (what Wittgenstein called) a “way of life.” Having a cat is as important for a physicist as having an advanced research lab. These common everyday things form the mental structure on which we hang the highly theoretical structure.