Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
Connection is one thing. Engagement is something very different. Connection is about creating interaction, a voluntary state of affairs through a medium of communication. Engagement is about creating presence, a creation of immediacy and contact. Connection respects my privacy; engagement does not. Garr Reynolds writes, "Although I am speaking in front of nearly 300 students in a large hall in Japan, I still have them get up and *do* something relevant from time to time." I hate it when presenters do that. It is an imposition, an invasion of my mental space and often of my physical space. It's one thing to enable a space for activities - that's connection. It's quite another to require that everybody participate in these activities. That's engagement. Enable, don't require.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024 09:46 a.m.

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