Reading and viewing the work of George Siemens has long been on my to-do list. After having it bookmarked on my delicious account for so long, the opportunity finally presented itself to get it done. I would highly recommend that anyone interested in higher education, academic advising and technology take just 10 minutes to watch his Youtube videos. It is well worth your time.
Brief Synopsis of George Siemens Big Ideas
- Knowledge is changing at a high rate of speed. What a student learns today may be obsolete by the time they complete their degree.
- To keep up with these rapid changes, educators need to help students "know-where" to find information rather than simply knowing "how or what".
- The practice of Connectivism will expose learners to a wide variety of ideas and opinions, assist them in connecting with scholars in the field, and help them to draw connections between areas of study. This is in stark contrast to the traditional notion of learning (i.e., student reads textbook which represents one point-of-view, authority is given to the disseminator of knowledge who may not be a scholar in the field and learning is linear).
- Siemens states that "the network is the learning" rather than the actual knowledge being presented.
Our students are now expected to be knowledgeable in a wide-variety of disciplines no matter what their field of study. It is our job as advisors (Remember: Advising is teaching!) to assist them in honing their 21st century skills and learning how to find knowledge rather than trying to learn everything in a vacuum. The greatest skill we can teach them is how to locate the knowledge that they need to be successful. We can do this by implementing connectivism into our advising practice whenever possible. Some of us have already started.
What ways can we implement Siemen's theory of connectivism into our practice?
5 comments:
Hi!
My name's Marcelo, I'm 21 and I'm a student of Chemical Engineering in Portugal.
I found your blog and now I plan to read it. Your posts seem to be very interesting, with attractive ideas about higher education.
I'm a fan of that subject so I'm happy to read here new things that will help me in my discussions about the theme.
All the best.
Marcelo Melo
Thanks for reading! It will be great to have an international perspective to add to the conversation!
Jillian,
Thanks for the link to "polymaths." Your explanation of your analogy works, although at first I was skeptical since today's students do not need to acquire knowledge in the same sense that the polymaths did, but they do need, as you pointed out, to know where to access that knowledge.
Dr. Burgos
Jill,
I really like what you got out of Siemens. The network is the learning and I agree that it is our job as educators to guide and direct our students to the knowledge. My post is up now too, let me know what you think!
Gabby
I loved the analogy...I too followed the link and when you look at the basic underlying theory, that polymath's were men who believed that all men were, "empowered, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible." How exciting...I think I know a few women that are like that right now...I have a new mantra...thanks!
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