Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Chaos and Order; Connectivism

So now that the debate about technology in the modern classroom is obsolete, due to inevitability; the task now becomes instilling a system in the learner so they can make meaning from it all. Teachers are now preparing future generations with the skill set to learn continually. This idea is called Connectivism: teaching how to  recognize, organize and externalize information, explained in depth in this video lecture: What is connectivism?
A learner is like a song-writer. To effectively communicate they must have a foundation of knowledge, recognize symbols, organize and piece them together and finally externalize them to convey meaning.  "Chaos states that the meaning exists-the learners challenge is to recognize the patterns which appear to be hidden" connectivism; a learning theory for the digital age. At the forefront of this theory is George Siemens; and he believes that "the ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today". I agree with him, in the communal learning environment; forming networks, processing and externalizing information have become more important than the actual information itself. 

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