"Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age."
"Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn." This, from the very fist paragraph of "Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age." It's that last clause that gets me, "and how we learn." Sure, we can agree that technology has changed how we live and how we communicate. But how we LEARN? And what does HOW mean? Are we talking about the obvious fact that students are using different learning tools, or trying to get at something more sublime...how students actually learn, as in what's going on in their brains. Now, for a rant: I've recently done the activity most are familiar with, "If the world were a village of 100" or something like that. Anyhow, only about 7% of the worlds population have access to the internet. So, that 90% percent of students who live their every day lives and go to school everyday without a computer or internet....has their learning remainded unchanged? Are the 10% somehow learning in a fundamentally different way??? Not just with different tools (eg computers, internet) but with something significantly different happening in their brains?
"Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking." What in god's name does this mean????????? EVIDENCE??? People never exposed to technology are what, unaltered? un-evolved, less than human? On the tract to becoming a different species??
"Constructivist principles acknowledge that real-life learning is messy and complex. Classrooms which emulate the “fuzziness” of this learning will be more effective in preparing learners for life-long learning." Wow, I'm sure this could generate volumes of discussion. The idea that learning is "fuzzy" flies in the face of what is much, much too often heard from US education these days, "I'm learning this so I can pass the standardized test of the week (and the school will therefore get more funding.") Using interent resouces, RSS, personal learning networks, etc., can DEFINITELY be a very messy and fuzzy experience. I think the epiphany here is something like this. Students always seem to do very similar things when using the intenet, as in go to google, type in a word or two, hit search, and then start reading the very first thing that comes up. Of course this is something that we're all familar with. A couple of things come to mind. First of all, students need to learn how to use search engines effectively, or just skip them all together and use RSS feeds. Second, and probably most important, is of course the need to make the content and there for the search for information MEANINGFUL to the student. Each one needs to WANT to suceed and find the best, most relavent and accurate information. Maybe a (completely wacko) comparison can be made to way back in the days of my youth there were three channels of TV and that was it. So, your interest in television was limited to three channels, not to mentioned shaped and dictated by those three channels. Not much of a choice, and the TV powers that be told you what your interests were at any given hour of the day. Now, hoever, with all that is technology and the internet, anybody with access has a gazillion channels to chose from, and really, nobody can dictate interest in any one of those channels, so why bother doing so as teachers?
"[Learning theories] also fail to describe how learning happens within organizations" Huh, now there's something to think about....studying how learning takes place within a group, how the group grows as a learning entity rather than how each group member grows. How does learning happen in Personal Learning Networks...
"...chaos states that the meaning exists – the learner's challenge is to recognize the patterns which appear to be hidden." Yeah, that's good. As educators we've the underlying belief that there is something to be learned, it is "out there" somewhere. Now, though, with technology, the path to finding that learning isn't a straight one. I guess the simple idea that there are many paths to the one. So for example we're studying rice cultivation in SE Asia now in my 7th grade humanities classes. We ask students to gather data such as population projections for e.g. Lao in 2050. My thinking as a teacher is, OK, find that information so you can do x, y, and z with it. I should shift my thinking to also include an expectation for the student that he is aware of the processes he's gone through to find the information. It makes sense in this world were there is so much "knowledge" out there to wade (or shovel) through that one becomes aware of HOW he find what he's looking for, and what it is that makes a) what he found significant and b) the significance of the steps taking to find a.
"The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical." Yes. Vital. Learning shouldn't be thought of as something built on a core foundation of information, but a core foundation of knowing about knowing or learning about learning. The awareness of what the information is.
A lovely little paradox of quantum mechanics is that the more precisely you know where a particle is the less precisely you know where it's going; the more precisely you know where it's going, the less precisely you know where it is.
"Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known" is this supposed to mean that it is more important to learn new things than to learn what's already been learned (ie known). I'm not sure I really get that.....
"The starting point of connectivism is the individual." No. It's a circle.
"Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses." Yeah, I think I get it. What connectivism represents, though, is a wholesale change in the way we think about education and how we deliver the "content."
"Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally" by Andrew Churches
"This element of the taxonomy does infer the retrieval of material. This is a key element given the growth in knowledge and information." I'm unclear on what he means here. Retrieving information from your brain or the ability to retrieve information from some source?
To me, the whole thing, the article, the premise, is begging the question.
OK, I'm getting too caught up in the details of the "new blooms." How can actually using features of the software be listed below using software. Don't really get it.
I turned to others' blogs about this to try and sort it out. Robin's on my RSS so I clicked on that and immediately saw this: "It seems like the pyramid should be a circle or something." Yes, exactly.
When I was reading some of the "new digital verbs" (the ones in blue) I kept thinking that they were trying to force it too much. Also, I was thinking about the early days of "ed tech" courses, as in the one I took in the late 1990s as part of my first MA--they (the ed tech courses) concentrated almost exclusively on how to use the software as an "end user" rather than how to use it as a meaningful part of students' learning.
As have some of my peers, I'm uncomfortable with the creating being atop the pyramid. Some of the "verbs" they have listed are really just software applications to make producing meaningless, thoughtless garbage all the easier. Also reminds me of back 90s when everybody was so dang impressed when a student could put together a PowerPoint...and the impression came from the flying text, transition gimmics, etc., and not the actual content. It's that meaningful content as a demonstration of learning that's missing for me from the "New Bloom."
"Messing Around"
"The youth we spoke to who were deeply invested in specific media practices often described a period in which they discovered their own pathways to relevant information by looking around with the aid of search engines and other forms of online exploration." The part here I've bolded and underlined is part of the crux of the whole tech thing for me...the realization that if we are to accept that students these days are "digital natives" then we must also accept that they just might have their own way of figuring out what to do or how to get where we want them to be.
"These efforts can lead to more sophisticated and engaged forms of media production." And there is the key...the "messing around" CAN lead to something more sophisticated and engaging. Perhaps this is where the teaching steps in. So if we do a pre-test for some traditional academic skill like naming the parts of speech, maybe we can do a pre-test to determine how or how much students can "mess around." It all comes back to motivation, yet again. People do Facebook and on-line gaming and chat rooms, etc., because they are interested. I guess as it's always been, MOTIVATING students to do some meaningful "messing around" and create for example PLNs is the hard part. Just as it's hard to create motivation to learn the parts of speech. Merely plunking a computer in front of them isn't the answer.
"For example, Alison, an 18-year-old video creator from Florida of white and Asian descent in Sonja Baumer’s study, notes that her personal media creations help her to become reflexive about herself and her own work: I like watching my own videos after I’ve made them. I am the kind of person that likes to look back on memories and these videos are memories for me. They show me the fun times I’ve had with my friends or the certain emotions I was feeling at that time. Watching my videos makes me feel happy because I like looking back on the past (Sonja Baumer, Self-Production through YouTube). Although the practices of everyday photo and video making are familiar, the ties to digital distribution and more sophisticated forms of editing and modification open up a new set of possibilities for youth creative production." LIKE WHAT??????????????????????????????????????
OK, the long passage above realy bothers me. People of all ages have been "scrapbooking" for ages. So what? Maybe I'm missing the point of this article, but why is import to know about how often kids might change their background or profile information on a social network site? It it simply and attempt to understand how younger people interact with media. Does any of this have anything to do with learning?
After finishing this section I think I understand the main point. We should be dealing more and more with self-directed learners, and as a consequence that's how we should be creating out classrooms.
0 comments:
Post a Comment