Connectivism: Being Connected in the Ether is Replacing the Classroom as the Source for Learning
In his essay “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age”, George Siemens states, “Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks.” Information, though at times vague, ambiguous, opinionated, biased, or just plain false, is ubiquitous. At every turn we find new ideas, the reporting of incidents and opinions, a twist on an old theme, artistic expression, emotional outpouring, new data, old data, and all because we are so connected. Learning is not always deliberate. Sometimes it is accidental or incidental. We are no longer (at least rarely) looking in paper books for information. Instead we are finding it through intentional searches of the oceans of digital data or happening upon it as we float about in social networks, peruse our feeds of personal interest data, or bump up against it as we cruise the information depths (that surfing analogy no longer works as the data pool has become too vast and too deep – we are now becoming experienced submariners in our information quest). As Seimens says, “Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
Siemens, in quoting Rocha, “Learning, as a self-organizing process requires that the system (personal or organizational learning systems) “be informationally open, that is, for it to be able to classify its own interaction with an environment, it must be able to change its structure…” brings focus to how critical the malleability of our learning processes must be in the ever changing landscape of our connected lives. We have so many resources available at our finger tip (the one attached to the mouse) that we must spend some time interpreting, verifying, analyzing, and applying the data in order to make truth of all that we find, “The capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our knowledge economy” (Wiley and Edwards, quoted in Siemens).
For organizations the expansive universe of information available creates special challenges of connectivity. Siemens focuses on the heart of the problem in stating:
Information flow within an organization is an important element in organizational effectiveness. In a knowledge economy, the flow of information is the equivalent of the oil pipe in an industrial economy. Creating, preserving, and utilizing information flow should be a key organizational activity. Knowledge flow can be likened to a river that meanders through the ecology of an organization. In certain areas, the river pools and in other areas it ebbs. The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends on effective nurturing of information flow.
Siemens concludes appropriately,” Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.” The ocean of knowledge is getting deeper and wider, but the ships we use to sail on it and in it are getting better too, as is the equipment with which we navigate. Now we just need to be sure to stay abreast of the changing sailing techniques. It has become evident, and sometimes painfully so, that we are not turning to the salty old dogs for tutorials, but instead we look to the Ishmaels of the digital sea as our models.
In his essay “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age”, George Siemens states, “Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks.” Information, though at times vague, ambiguous, opinionated, biased, or just plain false, is ubiquitous. At every turn we find new ideas, the reporting of incidents and opinions, a twist on an old theme, artistic expression, emotional outpouring, new data, old data, and all because we are so connected. Learning is not always deliberate. Sometimes it is accidental or incidental. We are no longer (at least rarely) looking in paper books for information. Instead we are finding it through intentional searches of the oceans of digital data or happening upon it as we float about in social networks, peruse our feeds of personal interest data, or bump up against it as we cruise the information depths (that surfing analogy no longer works as the data pool has become too vast and too deep – we are now becoming experienced submariners in our information quest). As Seimens says, “Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
Siemens, in quoting Rocha, “Learning, as a self-organizing process requires that the system (personal or organizational learning systems) “be informationally open, that is, for it to be able to classify its own interaction with an environment, it must be able to change its structure…” brings focus to how critical the malleability of our learning processes must be in the ever changing landscape of our connected lives. We have so many resources available at our finger tip (the one attached to the mouse) that we must spend some time interpreting, verifying, analyzing, and applying the data in order to make truth of all that we find, “The capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our knowledge economy” (Wiley and Edwards, quoted in Siemens).
For organizations the expansive universe of information available creates special challenges of connectivity. Siemens focuses on the heart of the problem in stating:
Information flow within an organization is an important element in organizational effectiveness. In a knowledge economy, the flow of information is the equivalent of the oil pipe in an industrial economy. Creating, preserving, and utilizing information flow should be a key organizational activity. Knowledge flow can be likened to a river that meanders through the ecology of an organization. In certain areas, the river pools and in other areas it ebbs. The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends on effective nurturing of information flow.
Siemens concludes appropriately,” Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.” The ocean of knowledge is getting deeper and wider, but the ships we use to sail on it and in it are getting better too, as is the equipment with which we navigate. Now we just need to be sure to stay abreast of the changing sailing techniques. It has become evident, and sometimes painfully so, that we are not turning to the salty old dogs for tutorials, but instead we look to the Ishmaels of the digital sea as our models.
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