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What I learned ~ theories I used
What I learned ~ theories I used
Developing my Substack became more than a technical project; it served as a living bridge between theory and practice, turning everyday troubleshooting into moments of rigorous academic insight.
This journey began as a deeply constructivist process. Rather than passively following tutorials, I threw myself into a hands-on, iterative cycle of trial and error. When I hit rigid layout and styling constraints, I couldn’t just search for a quick fix, I had to engage in a continuous loop of action, reflection, and reconstruction. This "learning by doing" transformed frustrating technical obstacles into deliberate CSS tweaks and intentional design choices, allowing me to actively construct my own technological fluency.
But as the platform grew, my self-directed experimentation reached its limits, and my growth shifted toward connectivism. Recognizing that knowledge is distributed across networks, I moved beyond solitary trial and error and plugged into diverse digital ecosystems. I navigated Google Sites forums, web design Discord servers, and a Substack creator group, sourcing solutions and treating these online communities as an extension of my own cognitive capacity. In this space, learning wasn't just about what I knew, but about how effectively I could navigate the network to find it.
Inevitably, actively engaging with these networks pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone. As I extended my zone of proximal development, new and complex challenges emerged, challenges that I could no longer solve simply by extracting information from a network. To move forward, I had to transition from a connected consumer to an active partner, leading me to fully embrace collaborativist theory.
My recent invitation to be a guest on Keith Keller's show (June 15, 2026) perfectly captures the essence of Connectivism. In our digital age, knowledge isn't just contained within an individual; it resides, flows, and grows across a distributed network.
By actively building an online community of mentors and friends, I am strengthening the "nodes" in my own learning network. Stepping outside of your comfort zone is essential to expanding that web, it allows you to establish new connections, bridge diverse perspectives, and discover the incredible wealth of knowledge (and good people) out there.
Every new connection alters the landscape of what we can know. Keep pushing the boundaries of your network!
The shift to collaborative came to life through my work with Keith. During our conversations, I introduced him to the concept of multimodality, which is found across the digital landscape, yet rarely named. Inspired by this discussion, Keith channeled his high-energy creativity to compose a unique theme song for his show.
In a reciprocal twist, this exchange introduced me to Suno. As both an artist and a researcher, engaging with generative audio platforms sparked an internal struggle regarding creative ownership and authenticity. While I am still actively working through these tensions, the experience perfectly illustrated the promise of collaborativism: a shared intellectual space where technology, theory, and human expression push both partners into new territories of
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