"Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people's experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge."
This quote from Karen Stephenson demonstrates one of the major ideas presented in the connectivism theory of education. In case you haven't noticed, our world has changed significantly in the last twenty years, no-make that decade, wait-last year, even in the last day! The rise of technology has completely changed, and is constantly changing, the way we live our lives in every aspect imaginable. As George Siemens makes clear in his article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and video The Changing Nature of Knowledge, a major difference in the way we live today deals with the way we learn. It was once believed that each individual learned in isolation, in an entirely internal fashion, or as Siemens describes this outdate theory, "learning is something that happens in the head of an individual." It was up to each and every learner to acquire knowledge on their own. Yes, they may be guided by others, but what they knew was dependent on what they did on their own. So, if experience is the best teacher of knowledge, each of us only know what we learned from our own life experiences. Can you imagine all that we could learn and know if only we were able to learn from others and take from them all they had learned in their own individual experiences?
Stop dreaming! It's a reality! Technology has made this possible.
The connectivism theory suggests that learning occurs external to the learner, as they "form connections with other individuals and other sources of information." This means simply that we learn from one another and from the resources we encounter. As Stephenson stated in the quote that opened this post, other people can serve us as sources of knowledge. They can teach us from what they have experienced and from what they have learned simply by sharing it. And with the advent of technology, especially social networking, we are able to connect with people from all over the world who we otherwise would not have access to, which means we are able to learn "exponentially!" It is these interactions with others that "enable us to stay current" with information and new knowledge, which is crucial in a world where knowledge is more rapidly becoming obsolete. And these interactions that we rely on to learn do not necessarily have to involve "others." We can learn so much from a multitude of resources, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, blogs, newscasts, and so on, but what is at stake here is "know-where" or "the understanding of where to find knowledge needed." According to Siemens, "our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we learn today." That means if we are able to tap into different sources of information and make connections between different units of information, then we've already won the knowledge battle. We rely and depend upon our connections, interactions and network to learn.
Which brings me to my analogy. Today's learners are not the triathletes that they once were, trying to understand and acquire as much knowledge as they could on their own, exhausting their brains and pushing themselves to the limits, because their mind was the only one they had to rely on. Today's learners are teammates on an NFL team (not the Bills).
If one player tried to go out and play all alone, he would be tackled by an entire team; it's just impossible for one to succeed on his own. There's no way to do it in isolation.
A team, made up of coaches, players, and trainers, succeed when they work together. Our players are the learners. They learn from the coaches, who train and drill them to learn every angle of the field, every play, every strategy. The trainers teach them another aspect about protecting their bodies, ways to work out, and how to treat an injury. The players rely on these two resources to impart their experience upon them so that they can draw on what these others already know. They also learn from one another, on the field, in practice, and in the locker room. Simply by talking about the game or any topic for that matter, they are learning from each other, about others' experiences during the game, after it, in practice, in the off-season: what works, what doesn't, and how to do something better. These resources represent the people that we surround ourselves with and learn from.
There is some individual work as well, such as watching film, working out on your own, and running rep and drill after rep and drill - passing, tackling, what have you. These practices parallel our interactions with resources that we seek out on our own - encyclopedias, blogs, articles, and so on. And it is this individual work that makes the entire team stronger, or as Siemens describes it in The Network is the Learning, it is "when we connect with a new node [that] the competence of an entire network is enhanced." One player can share with another what he noticed on the film he studied, he can offer advice about what he learned in a previous season or tip that a coach had once given him, and they do this socially. We do the same with the information that we are already familiar with - we share it with others. Each player adds something unique to the network that is the team, and each plays an important role. Because really, when it comes to learning, we all have our own individual strengths and areas of interest that we can bring to the table and share with others. Thus, we all play a unique role in the networks that we belong to.
The only difference between the learners and the players is that when learners come together to create their network, they always win the SuperBowl (of knowledge) because that means they are achieving the "continual learning" and "connectivism" that are essential in today's world if we are to stay "current," which Siemens demands.
Fascinating analogy!
ReplyDeleteDr. Burgos