Here is a presentation in Articulate from George Siemens that lays out his theory of connectivism and how it applies to the Read/Write Web. Much of what he says makes sense, I think. We need to start looking at learning much differently in a socially networked world. For instance, now that we have access to people and knowledge, learning is “network creation” and that we can learn through “collaborative meaning making.” And the idea the we no longer need to learn everything in “advance of need” resonates strongly with Brown and Hagel’s idea of push vs. pull learning, that we can pull information from a source when we need it, not have it pushed upon us in case we need it.
No doubt, these are some disruptive ideas for educators, which is why we need to consider them. The more I listen and read and learn from all of these new teachers, the more much of this seems to come into focus. But it also begs many new questions. What content to we still need to push? What are those core ideas that every child needs to consider? How do we teach ourselves to teach our students the skills they need to find and build their own networks for learning?
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