According to Gonzalez as quoted by Seimen, "Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months..." (2004). This fact brings the image of a learner from the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties as learning at the speed of what we first experienced as "dial-up" internet; a connection to the internet that took more than a few minutes and beat our eardrums up at the same time. It seems as though learners in the past did not have accessibility to the knowledge of others as we do now. This source of information is important, according to Karen Stephensen, as she state "Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge". Another similar point is made by George Seimen in the video The Network is the Learning as he states "technology allows people to stay current with individuals around the world. It is more effective than in the past...", supporting my idea of today's learners as the high speed version of yesterday's learners.
Monday, February 18, 2013
A Learner is Like...
Upon reading about George Seimen's new perspective on learning in today's world, labeled as his theory of Connectivism in the article Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age, I came to think of the learners we are educating in today's classrooms as a high-speed version of our now wireless internet. With WiFi being offered in almost in every corner cafe and gym, we can be connected with information and people in an instant. Today's learners are taking learning to a whole new level with their ability to learn the academic content or language others have learned in the past, but at a whole new pace.
According to Gonzalez as quoted by Seimen, "Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months..." (2004). This fact brings the image of a learner from the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties as learning at the speed of what we first experienced as "dial-up" internet; a connection to the internet that took more than a few minutes and beat our eardrums up at the same time. It seems as though learners in the past did not have accessibility to the knowledge of others as we do now. This source of information is important, according to Karen Stephensen, as she state "Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge". Another similar point is made by George Seimen in the video The Network is the Learning as he states "technology allows people to stay current with individuals around the world. It is more effective than in the past...", supporting my idea of today's learners as the high speed version of yesterday's learners.
According to Gonzalez as quoted by Seimen, "Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months..." (2004). This fact brings the image of a learner from the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties as learning at the speed of what we first experienced as "dial-up" internet; a connection to the internet that took more than a few minutes and beat our eardrums up at the same time. It seems as though learners in the past did not have accessibility to the knowledge of others as we do now. This source of information is important, according to Karen Stephensen, as she state "Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge". Another similar point is made by George Seimen in the video The Network is the Learning as he states "technology allows people to stay current with individuals around the world. It is more effective than in the past...", supporting my idea of today's learners as the high speed version of yesterday's learners.
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That's an interesting analogy and demonstrates how quickly things in education are changing.
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