Connectivism

I remember attending school and never breaking out a calculator because my parents didn’t have the money to buy a big 10 key calculator.  That calculator can now be purchased for $1.   Learning is so much different now than then.  We are more interested understand what the facts mean instead of just the facts.  We are constantly attempting to connect our learning to the world around us.  I help my students do just that through the Internet.  I have a couple of Web Quests that I require my students to complete.  This helps them realize how what they are learning is really connected to the real world.  A lot of times young people start to thing that we are just making them learn this or that because we are told to.  If I can help my students see the connections they are much more eager to learn.  I use the Internet to help me facilitate learning in my classroom.

When I have a question, I find the appropriate journal online to answer it.  I typically Google the subject in question and find a reliable source to glean the information from.

• How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles?

There are many companies that work in groups.  I am on several working groups in my school system.  One of those groups is to look at and adjust our teacher evaluation model so it really measures teacher effectiveness.  This has been a two-year venture.  However, I couldn’t have done this without a group.  We needed to melding of ideas to come up with the best model.  In a group there will be “pushback” from different members about different ideas.  Without this pushback there would be very little thought or investigation into different ideas and thoughts.  Therefore, I do believe that when we are creating something large (i.e. Wikipedia, evacuation model, and so on) we do gravitate to or have a basic instinct to “interact and work as a group.”

During the summer of 2009 and 2010, I worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratories.  This organization is the definition of group work.  Oak Ridge is only one National Laboratories of many Laboratories.  Inside the Laboratory, the campus is splintered in many different divisions.  These divisions work cooperatively to a common goal.  These accomplishments are shared with the necessary parties in other departments and other Laboratories.  This information will be used to advance collaborative work somewhere else.  Without the advent of technology, this type of work would be difficult to share knowledge and discoveries.

Constructivist’s principles are woven directly into everything that happens at Oak Ridge.  There are self-directed learning, collaborative learning, and critical analysis.  The world of technology has expanded our world to such an extent that I have had conversations with people that never would have taken place.  Being able to tap into these multitudes of resources to solve problems is part of the definition of constructivists. 

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