It’s late on Monday evening, and I’m pooped. Long day at work, you see. But I do have enough energy left before I dive into the bathtub for a soak to mention a few thoughts about George Siemens and his learning theory known as Connectivism.
I’ll probably be adding more to this post in a few days, but for now, my basic feeling from all the online readings I’ve been doing is that this learning theory is all about us connecting with each other and bringing together our experiences. Everybody has their own experiences, and by coming together and sharing those experiences, ie. with a Wiki, were creating a powerful and effective learning environment. This environment may be used in a variety of ways, which is also useful as it would be rather boring to have every person things the exact same way!
From the link I’ve included below, below find the main principles of connectivisim:
- Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. You, me, Uncle Larry, the man down the street, Cousin Nancy…everyone and their opinions!
- Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources
- Learning may reside in non-human appliances. It’s not all just in your head!
- Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
- Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning
- Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill
- Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities
- Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
More thoughts (I’ve had some sleep and read more of the online articles)…
Connectivism is all about today, the now, the network of the millions of people connected to each other through various networking capabilities: Facebook, Wikis, email, talking to each other, etc. etc. It seems the possibility is endless on this rapid transmission of ideas, thoughts, and ideals. To put it in perspective, I used to talk with my friends via the phone or in person. We used to play Scrabble at each other’s homes and at parties would have really interesting conversations about what we’d been up to. These days, we text each other rather than email, find out what’s going on in our lives via Facebook.com, myspace.com, or other social networking sites. I’m surprised we haven’t been texting each other at parties from across the room. Scrabble and other board games are played online, while we’re happily sitting in our own homes.
I suppose technology is a good thing, and this learning theory does a nice job of describing how we’re more than just our own network, but it seems when looking at all the details, we lose something of the human connection which we used to get in person and now only seem to get online.
After class this past Thursday, here are a few things which stood out from our class discussion about this topic:
1) Is it the truth? What’s posted online…do we believe it?
2) The issue isn’t if it’s right or wrong, rather, it’s about having access to all of that information
3) Connect with others that enables learning through networking/hubs, etc.
4) Choosing “what” to learn is as important as the learning itself
5) This process can be endless, positive or negative, it’s all inter-supportive, interconnected links worldwide which can be time/energy consuming!
6) Best Practices: Do they exist?
