Learning in the 21st century: Going with the flow

Learning

= change through interaction with the environment

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Interaction for learning

Content

Teacher

Peers

Teacher

Content(Materials)

Peers

Teacher centred tradition

Knowledge delivered by a teacher

Information was scarce

Held by teacherGleaned from rare documents

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Printing press

Cheaper production of copies

Controlled by publication system

Information scarcity prevailed

Information challenge

AccessRendered in physical form

Restricted location

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Recent decades:4 waves of change

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Desktop publishing

Affordance

Anybody could produce quality copies

Constraint

Location limit persisted

World Wide Web

Affordance

One copy simultaneously available globally

Constraints

Restricted to networked locationsRequired some technical skill

Anybody could publish but few did

Web 2.0 : blogs, wikis, RSS

Affordances

No technical skill requiredPublish direct to WWW

End of publisher restrictions

Constraints

Limited access locations

Mobile Internet : 3G & smartphones

Affordances

Publish from anywhereAccess from anywhere

Constraints

PublicationAccessNetwork reachCost?

Information economy

From scarcity to abundance

= Attention economy

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Goldhaber, M. H. (1997). The Attention Economy and the Net. First Monday, 2(4). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/519/440

Evolving views of knowledge

Objectivism

Knowledge exists in the world

Can be possessed

Fits role of teacher as transmitter

Constructivism

Knowledge is constructed from experience

Emphasis on building understanding & problem solving

Fits learner-centred approaches

Social constructivism emphasises collaborative knowledge building

Constructing shared meaning

Connectivism

Knowledge exists in the network

Fits with learning as making connections

Networks of people and things

Ties to social networking

How does this affect educators?

Pedagogical shift :Objectivism to ConstructivismFollowed epistemological shift

Sage on the stage to guide on the side

Challenges to professional identity

Challenges to community acceptance

What about Connectivism?

Supplement not supplant

Earlier modes are necessary but not sufficient

New approaches add to core or foundation

ObjectivismConstructivismConnectivism

(Anderson & Dron, 2011)http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/890

Information abundance & learningEducation less about accumulating knowledge

More about transforming and applying knowledge

Processing information from network

Foundation knowledge

Locating, evaluating & applying knowledge

Assumes knowledge as base

Needs attention to foundations

Supports new skills

Additional challenges

Knowledge as property

Collaboration in networks

Assessment of learning

Knowledge as property

Makes misappropriation possible

Copyright breach & plagiarism

Networked information is easier to access

Questions around boundary issues

Solution through education?

Collaboration

Working in networks requires skills

Beyond “divide & conquer”

Build skills for dialogue

Assessment

Is it valid to assess an individual separated from the network?

Authentic assessment

Strategies for educators

Use the networkConnectShare

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Manage information flow

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Don’t hunt and gather information.

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Don’t hunt and gather information.Farm it.

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Subscribe to trusted sources – newsletters and blogs

Subscribe to services – searches & bookmarks

Share ideas and questions with global teams

Build digital networks using existing networks as a base

Build digital bridges to professional learning networks

Personal connections with global reach

Personal/professional Learning Networks

Extend searching beyond the WWW

Conclusion

We face a flood of information

Our world is connected

Use our networks to manage the flow