Sunday, September 29, 2013

Do you want to "Explore" ? You are the learner of the Digital Age!

A learner is like a member of an expedition who explore unknown areas. They need three things to explore there. Basically, they need knowledge about what they want to find and where they can find it. Not only that, media literacy is crucial since there are tons of information and new information consistently comes out. The ability to draw distinctions between importatn and unimportant information is vital. (Quote from Connectivism: A Learning Theory For the Digital Age, George Siemens ) In order to find out something they need, they  have
to select necessary information. The other thing is social networks. As the old saying geos that many hands make light work, the more knowldge they get, the more easily their work can be completed. This is what learners in the twenty-first century are doing.

In the past, what I have to learn is physical things such as books and pencils. Since teachers have much more experience than me, I have to listen to them carefully. Learning meant building extensive knowldege and was usually one-way, which indicated little interaction between teachers and students. At the advent of the Internet, technology only supported me in learning. I thought my life will be more convenient. Ironically, my life is getting more complicated. It is technology that makes my life more complex. Since what I learned a few years ago becomes obsolete, I have to try to learn something new from various sources not to get left behind. Also, I have difficulty in deciding something because of thousands of information. That is why the following sentence resonated with me. Decision-making is itself a learing process. (Quote from Connectivism: A Learning Theory For the Digital Age, George Simens ) Not only as a learner but also as a teacher, life is getting challenging. To stay alive, I should know about networking with using technology.

Networking is the learning. What I mean is the way we are connected to other individual is largely responsible for our ability to continue to stay current..... (Quote from The Networking is the Learning) It is fundamental to learn how to network with other people. Their experience can be mine and we can work in a group. As a group, we can share different ideas and get positive feeedback from one another, which makes a larger network. I want to stay current so that I can apply my everything to my teaching. I am willing to be a member of the expedition!




2 comments:

  1. Your analogy works well but I think it is more accurate to say a learner is like a member of an expedition as you did in your last sentence.

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  2. You are right, so I corrected it! Thank you.

    ReplyDelete