Unknown unknowns
That’s part of the famous Donald Rumsfeld quote which I think fits very well as the title of my blog post when talking about future of learning.
We as a specie have at least realised now that the learning and knowledge is also subject to evolution! and that we have been unable to break ourselves completely from the chains of the industrial and battlefield preparation style learning processes, mechanisms and theories in practice since times Byzantine empire and in essence we have been following the same model intrinsically while making superficial changes – a sort of ‘S’ in SAMR model!
The reading material for this course provided me with intriguing concepts to ponder on and although I have followed and am aware of MOOCs and Badges the Connectivism
theory is new and it engrossed me in the reading and viewing material I could find online. ‘Learning may reside in non-human appliances’ is a fascinating principle of this theory and puts some understanding of technology in education into perspective. I am currently trying to evaluate this theory to classify it in my own mind as an evolution or a revolution! First thoughts are that it may be an evolution which has the potential to bring about a revolution in learning practices and understanding of knowledge.
I think that having the lines of thought and work being done for ‘connectivism theory’ may also bring about the push towards R of the ‘SAMR’ model which we desperately need in the education sector. We may start looking at education and learning from a completely different angle and perhaps start to emphasise on learning of essentials in the early stage developing into innovational, personalised, project based learning model later in the ‘schooling’ of our generations. The following video I found and Sugata Mitra’s ending comments echo my thoughts here.
COETAIL course is in some way elaborating the modern ways of learning and how we can grow out of our ‘classroom’ model into a more personalised self paced learning model. I see the connections with my how my own learning and knowledge has and is developing through this course with what I am actually learning. Amazing. Simply amazing.
I loved the phrase from George Siemens’ article and would like to use it here to end this post.
“The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.”
1 COMMENT
You pulled out two of my favorite quotes about Connectivism. It is fascinating to think about, and even though the language is easy to read, the ideas are deep and require a lot of processing time. I can’t remember if I shared this already, but I also really like this short video summary of connectivism by injenuity.