thanks George
I think once you acknowledge that different knowledge has varying durability then that notion invades all learning spaces, including the ones you had in mind when developing connectivism theory. eg. concepts like machine to machine communication (XML or whatever), aggregation, tagging, folksonomies may become irrelevant in the future but are sufficiently durable for now to be given more long term emphasis than other questions such as "is wordpress or blogger better?" (important but shorter term). I'm not arguing for some sort of absolute fundamental knowledge but that domain expertise does require being clear about deeper concepts, compared with more ephemeral concepts. Content / pipe is a dialectic, it doesn't always fall one way.
wrt smarts the the death of genius page, argues (citing new scientist) that:
1) hard work, focused effort (effortful study), is most important
2) supportive environment, mentoring is also very important
3) natural ability (genetics) has some importance but is not so important as the first two
I teach chess and find myself often advising "slow down", "think", "don't play the first move that comes into your head". Also notation of games and going through them trying out different variations and taking notes is a good way to learn. If we have the notion of "slow deep thinking" from alan kay's list then that provides guidance that this sort of teaching worthwhile. I know chess players who are "better connected", eg. play more regularly, but don't improve much because they don't do what is required to improve.
thanks for studio based learning reference