UB English Ning

The UB English Education Ning can be a useful tool for me in many ways. First, it helps me keep in contact with any fellow English Ed. majors that I have met over the course of time, and it gives up a sphere where we can communicate. Secondly, we can post our ideas and get feedback for them...without any pressure, or obtain ideas (beg, borrow, and steal). The UB Ning is a place where we can share our success stories, horror stories, and works of art that our students presented to us. It is an awesome educational tool.

The Learner

A learner is like an canoe. While it will still be a canoe able to drift around in the water, in order for it to reach a specific destination, the canoe needs to be filled with a team of people directing where the canoe will wind up. In addition, the number of people can shift, teams can shift, and strength and speed will change over time, but as long as there are people rowing that canoe, it will eventually reach it’s destination. I can relate this analogy back to the theory of connectivism, which states, “Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories...[it] is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations,” (George Siemens, 2005).

In my analogy, the people in the canoe symbolize the information change that occurs over time because of the informational flow of data. Siemens argues that, “Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity,” (2005). Because the canoe is now filled with people, it represents that “tectonic shift” and the rowing the canoe is no longer an individual activity. Consider this analogy when comparing social networks. If there are twenty teachers without any type of social network, than they stand alone, possibly drifting like the empty canoe. However, once you present the idea of connectivisim to the equation, because of a network such as a blog or wiki, the teachers can work together and "stay current and continue to learn from each other," (Siemens The Impact of Social Software on Learning). Connectivism clearly has shaped the way we learn!

Sources:

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age George Siemen

The Impact of Social Software on Learning