Musings - Just Learning

Just when we could barely get our minds wrapped around constructivist learning theories in all its permutations, a new learning theory has been proposed to more adequately address how learning is taking place into today’s digitized world. George Siemens calls it connectivism and explains it in his short but significant paper Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. In it he points out the shortcomings of constructivist and cognitive theories of learning to propose a theory that can address chaos, networks, and connectivity in organizations. I guess you can say it is a macro approach to learning theory from a postmodernist position. Just recently, I finished reading The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman and can say that these two independent works are pretty much pointing out a similar phenomenon. That is, a paradigm shift has taken place in pedagogy and practice over how people are making meaning and opportunities for themselves using knowledge capital in the midst of a technology and information glut.

Recently, in his own blog on connectivism, Siemens tackled the definition of learning as fundamentally being an activity of meaning-making. While it has left him unsatisfied, I think it is better than a simple acquisition of knowledge. Never before in history has an individual been exposed to so much readily available information. We know that mere exposure does not constitute learning. It seems to me that meaning-making is at least a good beginning to defining the process of learning. And so, I have been challenging myself as a teacher of adolescent learners – how am I providing an environment for my students in which they can engage in meaning-making? How do I go about presenting information and evaluating their performance given this position? As an educational technologist, how do I persuade my colleagues that technology can be an appropriate support for meaning-making in this paradigm shift? How do I explain to parents that this paradigm shift implicitly affects the type of educational tools that will be required by their children to best prepare them for a future in this digital world?

Another statement of Siemen’s that resonates with my experiences and perspective: Learning must link to real life. Never has the world been more flat or connected. Now we must prepare the next generation to understand and flourish within this connectedness.