Monday, September 24, 2007

Blogs

As I mentioned previously, blogging is a totally new process for me. I thoroughly enjoy reading others thoughts on various topics. It's a great way to see a different perspective and certainly can be enlightening. That said, I'm a little intimidated by it all. Part of the issue is attempting to blog on topics that are new to me as well as finding time to read the published blogs, process them and comment or contribute. Now if the discussion related to gardening, bird watching and identification, the joys of living with cats, being a new grandparent, I could gone on at length. Come to think of it, maybe I need to look for blogs related to those topics, but that will have to wait until I've completed the course. In the meantime I'm enjoying gaining new skills through this course.

Connectivism

I'm struggling with commenting on connectivism. Please remember that I am not in a classroom setting so it's a little more difficult for me to translate what this looks like in a school setting. This is one of those times I would have enjoyed actually having a conversation with other students about this. That said, it seems to be a fairly obvious theory of what takes place in any setting where individuals are seeking information, learning new ways of work, critically thinking about information. I know that I am probably overly simplyfying Siemens but I think he is describing the process everyone needs to go through when learning. When we have a problem to solve, or theory to prove or disprove we utilize many "nodes" to gather all the necessary information, determine its validity and publish the results. It's necessary for us to network with many people, systems and resources. Siemens defines connectivism "as a theory describing how learning happens in a digital age." The issue in a digital age is that the volume of information has increased dramatically and requires individuals to process much more than in the past. They need to be able to effectively network with a larger audience. I think that this could actually be more of an issue for long time educators than for children who have grown up in the digital age. As Bill Gates was quoted, "...Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year old mainframe. It's the wrong tool for the times" Educators need to be open to utilizing all the new technology that is so rapidly being developed. It will be interesting to see how systems change in response to technology.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

School 2.0

The concept of School 2.0 is a great one. The posters really give life to the concept. I think there is no question this is the direction that education needs to go. Actually all organizations could benefit from this type of a concept. I think that it is going to take quite some time before the educational system can pull this together. I'm not a teacher, but I have served on the school board of our local school, which is K-12 for one community. For it to be a success within a community there would need to be a committee made up of all stakeholders: educators, parents, taxpayers, IT people, administrators, town officials. A well planned presentation could be made to explain all aspects of School 2.0. including what the steps of a long range plan would look like. I think the biggest hurdle, aside from money, is the technology hurdle. This hurdle needs to be encountered, understood and conquered before progress can be made. In the past, taxpayers were concerned about the costs of brick and mortar but this concept would center more around the costs of technology.

Monday, September 3, 2007

First Thoughts

Hi all - I decided to come back into this blog and edit it since it is my first thoughts which was one of the initial assignments. This is definitely new territory for me. I have never participated in a blog. Not quite sure how to maneuver in this new world but I guess I'm going to find out quickly. I am continually looking for new opportunities to learn and the learning curve for all this seems steep but I'm hoping it will level out soon.

Talk to everyone soon.

Pat