A new learning theory for the Digital Age.
According to Siemens, over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate and how we learn. He provided some significant trends in learning that as a junior-high English teacher I am deeply concerned:
- Learning now occurs in a variety of ways- through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completiong of work-related tasks.
- Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime.
- Technology is altering our brains. AThe tools we use define and shape our thinking.
- Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where.
Because of thiese new learning tredns, the connectivism theory is brought up. Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, nentwork, and complexity and self-organization theories.
In my opinion, the connectivism emphasizes on helping building learners' abilities to connect the knowledge economy. What are the learners abilities?
- to recognize and adjust to pattern shifts
- to classify their own interaction with an environment
- to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns
- to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information
Now in Taiwan, there is an educational reformation promoting the idea of giving the students abilities for living in the digital era. And that's the reason why I am in ITEC program now. Update myself.
2 comments:
Thanks Fen,
You mentioned our way of thinking is changed. I am curious if there are actual changes in the way the brain is wired. It would be fun to see if new millenium learners are different in brain functioning.
Hi Fen:
I like the concept of 'knowledge economy'. It's brilliant! Like the 'new economy' in the late 90's (i.e. the dot.com boom) was rich with information initially, then crashed as quickly as it was born.
This 'knowledge economy' has a fighting chance. I hope that all of us who are part of this new economy learned from our mistakes in the past.
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