Module 07: More on Emerging Theories

This week I read more into theories of connectivism presented last week and started to read Seymour Papert’s The Children’s Machine, while skimming the remainder of the book before this post.

The articles on connectivism presented the learning theory as an improvement on past learning theories more relevant for 21st century learners and technology. Foundational concepts include knowledge as something that exists outside ourselves, not a entity. Learning is characterized as making connections and displaying the ability to construct and send information across connections. Connections can be both neural and through networks of people, databases and other informational systems.

The Children’s Machine seems to be a call for a massive shift in the current education system. Papert asserts education needs to shift from a system that provides knowledge to something that allows students to learn to provide themselves with knowledge in the context of the creation of a physical item. He divides people involved in academics into two categories based on actions over intentions, Schoolers and Yearners. “Schoolers” are people who recognize a problem but only look for quick fixes to these problems. While “yearners” are quite different: they are people who focus on shifting the paradigm of what it means to be educated and provide tools and instruction to students in smaller schools. He suggests the role of computers as tools that help students make connections, not an isolated skill or subject as many school assign them to be. His only reservation toward this type of schooling seems to be on elitism that could emerge. He compares education to the entity of the USSR providing the illusion to a good education, but not actually providing it.

I am learning what it means to learn and gain knowledge is a complex and ever-changing idea. Behavioral, cognitive, and constructional theories do not tell a complete story and shape education in possibly less effective ways than that that may be discovered. There are sure to be further developments in future thinking/learning theories and as technology evolves in the way it records and stores information. I have always viewed learning as something that happens inside someone alone, but the fact that patterns exist outside of what is held in the mind or has been conceived by the any brain is a radical concept that I am just beginning to wrap my mind around. The implications of this type of understanding could be revolutionary to learning and education.

An understanding that the pipe is more important than what is in the pipe as Siemens asserts, will help me to strive for looking for ways to help my students make connections and provide support and encouragement when my students make connections. While I do not know how this will look, I believe I can be a motivator of good thinking in my classroom. I hold the belief that what I believe naturally comes out of my mouth and can be seen in my actions. If I truly believe that I can be an agent of change in my students lives, I believe my actions in the classroom will reflect this shift.

The discussion board this week has focused on connectivism and the relation of this theory in special education. Understanding that the starting point of connectivism is an individual and special education revolves around individualized instruction, we discussed how we might frame education for specific learners. This discussion was helpful to me because individualized instruction is something that I deal with everyday in the classroom, but I was able to rethink this concept. Further, I was able to really look into the theory of connectivism and explore the implications of this revolutionary educational theory. We came up with ideas of how students can gain for themselves an individualized education. This relies on the student, the instructor, and the instructional institution. Instructional organizations need to understand that learning how to learn is more important than providing students with general knowledge. Instructors need to play the role of guides in this process, modeling how this can be actually done. Finally, students need to be open to learning and take autonomy provided in the learning process seriously. A belief I hold to in life is that you get out of things what you put into them. The more effort you put into learning, the more learning you will get out of it.