I have just spent the most enthralled 17 minutes of my teaching career. I was looking for a bit more information on how connectivism can be used to help a range of students, hoping, I guess, that something would come up and slap me in the face, making everything seem easy. I am so surprised to have found this while I was trolling through blogs and wikis, a lecturer I have never heard of who, just by watching his video, has changed my way of thinking entirely.
He makes a great reference ( about 8 minutes in for those in a hurry) to how we 'oldies' (over 25) take a wrist watch for granted as a means to tell the time, because we are conditioned to do it, after all we were made before the digital age and wouldn't have a clue what time it was without a watch; but how his daughter wouldn't be seen dead with a 'single function device' like our watch. 'Newbies' (under 25) obviously want multi-function, fast and instant access to time data, and their ipod, iphone, web browser, podcast and every other electronic gizmo world allows them to dispence with a watch. So if their ipod, iphone, web browser, podcast and every other electronic gizmo world can allow them to dispense with a watch, then why not allow them to dispense with lectures in favour of multi-media.
This appears to be the fundamentals of connectivism, the lecturer is no longer a 'lecturer' but an agent for change, maybe the way forward is to teach the skills necessary for the learner to find out how to use his or her ipod, iphone, web browser, podcast and every other electronic gizmo, and research the world for themselves.
Have a listen to this guy and see what you think.
Sir Ken Robinson
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