While digging though a backlog of unread blog posts in Google Reader I stumbled across this video. Last weekend two big topics of the CLMS Technology Conference were online learning and personal learning networks, so the timing of this discovery is quite apropos for me. What are we doing to create learning opportunities for the student described in the video? Is this a realistic model for middle or high school education? What might be the benefits or trade offs? I have my own thoughts, which you can listen to here, but I’m curious what you think. My mind is very formative on this issue at the moment.
Joe
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I understand where you coming from Anthony. I believe that this new concept for learning and sharing knowledge is a bit complex but once mastered is an excellent tool. Student can be turned off by these new web technologies if they find themselves frustrated and unable to grasp the concept of connectivity. The biggest challenge to a student who is just discovering the web for knowledge recollection is information management. Identifying and creating a network is a task that is exhausting and overwhelming and that’s why a teacher should take students steps by steps (i.e. creating a reader, sharing feeds, creating blogs). We can’t assume that students will get it in a week….They need to be able to enjoy the activities accompanied with the assignments, find the meaning and usefulness of their collection of relevant data. Teachers would hope that students will start working independently once a student feel comfortable using these web technologies. This might take a whole semester to master.
Hi Joe,
I am a grad student at Pace University in New York City. I am in a program in Educational Technology and am in the middle of a class on technology based curriculum design. Last week we just talked about this concept of connectivism. With the internet technology being used today, I think that this idea is a great direction to take middle and high school classes. Between blogging, social bookmarking, and RSS feeds, we are set to put the internet to even better use in our classrooms and this generation of students are the most prepared to begin to use these tools in their learning.
Some thoughts:
1) As your question asks, I don’t think we are creating these learning opportunities for our students. I don’t think there are enough teachers out there who are making these strides to show students that social networking a) can be a good thing b) can be used for many other things than just leaving messages for friends and posting pictures of last night’s party. There are a lot of people like yourself who are working hard to push our schools in the right direction. I wonder if this effort will be too little, before the technology changes again. I don’t want this to be the case…
2) I think many teachers right now don’t want to be the first one to try this. I think for our average student, there will be a slight learning curve to understand how to use these web 2.0 technologies. I know there are teachers who are not willing to spend the class time to show them how to use them. I think the biggest hurdle is student motivation and consistency. I see a lot of what that video clip shows depends on the student. Do most of our students have the desire to create vast and complex learning networks where collaboration, sharing, and idea interchange is the norm and a powerful tool? Or are most of them content with the mechanics of write the paper…get a grade…move on… I don’t know. I struggle with this.
I like a lot of the stuff on your blog…figured I’d give my $0.02.
Anthony Pinnavaia
Brooklyn NY