Connectivism and its Application in the Digital Classroom

A modern day teacher is like the ingredients in a well cooked meal.  As you can tell, I am hungry, but still a decent analogy nonetheless.  The teacher provides the framework in which the students create their own learning and understanding through connecting to others.  Fresh, organic ingredients provide a much more superb meal, than a frozen dinner that is just heated in the microwave.  The preparer (the student) is the person who has the know how to combine the ingredients and be able to cook them to create a meal that is shared with others. The teacher is the stuff that is needed to create the meal, but the preparer (the students) are the ones who actually put everything together.
Connectivism is what needs to be emphasized in the digital classroom because our students live in a society where rote memorization is not needed.  Our society values a network of learning, where peoples' ideas are shared and learning takes place in the interactions with others.  In George Siemens video, The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature, he relates Vygotsky's theory that 'language gives birth to our thoughts', which is in contrast to most previous learning theories (behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism).  The theory of Connectivism, is a new way to look at learning- not as the learner as an empty vessel but as an operator.  George Siemen's January 5, 2001 article, he clearly outlines the theory of Connectivism and compares that to the previous theories of learning.  As educators we need to embrace this new theory and prepare our students for this new outlook into the learning realm.  We need to teach them the skills that they use for the rest of their life.

A 'Duh' moment in the life of a teacher

In Larry Ferlazzo's blog, he recently blogged about a 'Duh' moment that he had about finding L2 videos for his content class.  I think that this post was insightful because we all have these moments, and its ok.   As teachers we shouldn't be afraid to blog about our experiences in the field, even the not so good ones.  We can all sympathize and learn from each other.  Its important to create a teacher community that is open and supportive.  If we just blog about positive experiences, than they lose meaning because these positive experiences most likely occurred after many failed attempts.  If we never experienced failure, than we wouldn't appreciate our successes.  I think that it takes a lot of courage to share these failed attempts with others and I want to commend Larry Ferlazzo for being so open about this experience because teacher, especially new teacher can appreciate this feeling.  The name of this post is:  Great Resources For English Language Learners In Content Classes and the link to this blog is below:

Larry Ferlazzo's Edublog

Digital Classroom Integration

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

This video gives a great perspective into the lives of our students and how their learning capacity can be stifled by their teachers in the digital world.  Their creativity is limited in the digital realm.  Most often this is the realm that they feel most comfortable with, is exactly the media that teachers feel the most unease with.  Teachers need to rise to the challenge and experiment with this new technology that their students are learning.

The Educational Challenge

The field of teaching has not changed in comparison to the other fields in the past 100 years.  Teachers need to take a different perspective of teaching and the environment that they teach in.  Teachers have to ask themselves are they relevant in todays changing world.  They also have to ask themselves are they creating life long learners, all while complying with todays rigorous standards.  Simply presenting material to the students, is no longer acceptable.  Students can find the material on the internet easily enough.  Creating critical thinkers who can adapt to a changing world is the challenge.

A Brave New Digital World

While reading chapter 1, in A Brave New Digital World by James Blake I firstly impressed by his description of technology and how he breaks down the meaning of technology with the tool metaphor.  He uses the metaphor "good tools become invisible once the users understand their basic operation", which is new perspective of technology for me.  Reflecting on this new perspective, the majority of our daily interactions are mediated by tool, that largely goes unnoticed.  Applying this principle to SLA, language learning takes place in the social context (sociocultural theory), can perhaps take place in a sudo-social context created by technology.  Blake stresses that the L2 language should be comprehensible for the students and also that the students themselves feel like they are interacting in a social manner.  Comprehensible input is necessary for L2 learners to be able to engage with the target language.  Mediation is required to ensure that correct forms of the target language is being used, and also to guide students to the correct formation of the target language.  Students are and have grown up with this explosion of technology literally at their fingertips.  Their proficiency and confidence with this medium is most likely at a high level, perhaps maybe even more than the teachers.  Yet, this new medium should not be avoided but rather embraced, because if not for anything else, students will want to engage with the target language in this medium.

Blake's explanation of technology helped me to obtain a better perspective of the use of technology and how it becomes invisible after sufficient exposure.  This is not something that I had reflected upon before.  His explanation made me think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the opening scene where there is a monkey who uses a tool (i believe a bone) to accomplish a task then he throws it up into the air and it becomes a spaceship.  As humans we have always had technology but not necessarily realized that it was around us.   As educators, we have the opportunity to engage our students with this new technology in a meaningful way.  Students use technology for social purposes already, why not translate this into the SLA realm.