A Hive of Learners

A learner is like a bee. Bees are a very communal insect that work for the betterment of the hive. While one bee is not so important, it is the total of all the small contributions combined into a whole that make the hive strong, produce honey, and nourish all the members. Bees also rely on strong networks of communication to distribute work and relay the location of pollen sources.

The hive works similarly to George Siemen’s theory of connectivism. In the video “The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature," he states that the “learning and the act of knowledge creation is a function of network…where it is the aggregation of activities of many individuals that generates meaningful or useful knowledge.”

So, like the bee, it is not the work of any one individual that determines the ability to grow or create, it is the “aggregation of activities,” our the buildup of output, that generates a useful product.

In his essay “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age”, he places importance on the connections between nodes in networks and the diversity of the network. These three principals as stated by Siemens are:

Learning and knowledge rests in a diversity of opinions.
Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.

Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.

He implies that in order for today's learner to take advantage of all resources he must rely on connections to information sources, on taking care to maintain connections, and to utilize a great number of nodes. Again, this is similar to the bee and its hive. Without a strong system of communication between each node and care for the nourishment of the network, there would be chaos. It may be near impossible to find food, allocate work, and in the end, flourish.