Connectivism

When reading George Siemens' book on connectivism,
I found it very interesting and a concept I would not think about if I was not in this class. It seems to make a lot of sense to me, that we work in a fast paced society that rely on networks of individuals to complete knowledge. I wonder if it is true for all people in our society though. Would connectivism be applicable to those individuals who are not technologically savvy? Would those same people network? Would they utilize many people to accomplish a task or research information in a way other than using technology?

On page six of Siemens book, I found it interesting that Knowing Knowledge was broken out into two different audiences. One was the educators and the other was the business world. He continues to say, "A business executive needs to understand the characteristics of knowledge that impact creating effective teams to achieve corporate strategy. An educator needs to understand the new context of knowledge in order to prepare learners for a life of learning and working with knowledge. Simply put, life is learning. If we interact with people, ideas, or concepts, (in a classroom or corporate boardroom), knowing and learning are our constant companions."

I do agree we can't keep up with the amount of information we are bombarded with on a daily basis. The media is attacking us everywhere we look with information. Television, Computers, radio, text messages, etc. We receive messages over and over through the media. It is instant. There are video blogs, pictures sent over cell phones, and our world is becoming an instantaneous mecca of knowledge and information.

It is so true how our education systems are "stuck" in the old method of attaining knowledge. They want to fill the kids brains with information and then have them spit the knowledge back out on a "test". That is not what it is like with the new technology we offer the students of today. The kids can be responsible for their own learning if they were allowed to participate in web conferences with someone like a chemist or doctor and where they were allowed to prepare questions to ask over a Skype type line. They kids would learn more if they were constructing their own learning environment using a wiki or a blog. They would have "ownership".

Working together students and adults can accomplish more. There are a lot of people who know some things. When put together, and share all of the little bits of what they know, it turns into something bigger. Working together as a network, they will remember more of the information because they were part of creating it. I think this is where we want to be in our educational system, but we are stuck. It is scary to make changes. It is scary to allow the kids to have more control and let the "teacher" become the facilitator and not the end all be all in the classroom. If this was the case, what would we test? How would we test the knowledge gained?

I think with the 21st century technology that we are trying to add to our schools, this process is beginning, but it is a ways away. I think we are headed in a direction of working in this connectivism process, but it is difficult to convey this thinking process to some.

I liked the quote on page 32, "Know where" and "know who" are more important today than knowing what and how. An information rich world requires the ability to first determine what is important and then how to stay connected and information as information changes. What is so neat, is that the kids of today are doing this and they do not even realize it. They know to look things up on the computer, share the information they found with each other over a social networking site, and then accomplish their task of sharing music, homework, etc.

I agree that we can accomplish a lot more learning if we work together.