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.

EFL Classroom 2.0

I joined the social network EFL Classroom 2.0 via the networking site Ning. It seemed like it was one of the largest and most active groups on the topic of English language teaching on Ning. It has a lot of resources that would be helpful in the classroom. There is a dicussion forum, links to members blogs, a space for video conferencing, and a link to helpful sofware. There are also a great many resources for the classroom such as lesson plans, games, and downloadable videos, songs, and books for teaching.

I think the greatest use for a site such as this is that it generates ideas. Sometimes a teacher is unhappy with his lesson plans or cannot even get started, and it is good to have a place to go for ideas. Other times a teacher is tired of the same old lessons or the same formats and needs to spice things up. ESL Classroom 2.0 has a wealth of information and offers opportunities to gain many insights.

The Growth of Global Communication and Educational Effects

This video, entitled Did You Know, was quite eye opening and mind boggling. I think I'd begun to realize already that the Internet and high tech communications were still in their infancy in the year 2009, but this video shows us that they are maturing at an exponential pace and that the potential is a great unknown.

The video puts the onus of preparing people for these changes on schools and teachers. Preparation is so important because if a person does not have a skill set to work in the forthcoming environment he will be left behind.

I believe it will also be the responsibility of schools to take advantage of the possibilities. With so many resources available instruction will be able to take an unlimited number of forms and harnessing the potential will be difficult but exciting.

I don't know if the video was implying that technology was a cause for some of the other developments in the world such as English becoming a common language or increased educational opportunities in some countries. I do think, however, that these linguistic and knowledge shifts are notable because it is cause to teach more tolerance to students as they will be dealing more readily with a great diversity of people.

I also think that educating students in learning strategies or exploration strategies will become important because it will be impossible to teach all of the knowledge. It may be the primary job of schools in the future to show students how to become independent researchers and thinkers in the technological realm so that they will be able to keep up beyond their school years.