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.