Reflection on Connectivism

I partly agree with the authors who contest Siemen’s idea of Connectivism, in that I think learners need to have a good foundation of knowledge and understanding before they can apply or grow their knowledge in an area.  There needs to be a level of recall that is fundamental for building on top of this knowledge.  Eg knowing basic maths can then allow a learner to lead to more advanced maths problem solving that is applied to different contexts.  However, I also agree with Siemen as I believe that it is extremely important for learners to not have to know everything, but to be able to know where and how to find the information.  This is more realistic of the “real world”, where most professions have access to resources they can access if they don’t know the answer.   

An example of using Connectivism in the classroom could be a project on solar eclipses.  Students could research the background and information on solar eclipses online (websites, I tunes U, podcasts etc), watch Youtube clips to see the solar eclipse, and then use social marketing sites to talk to/interview people who saw first hand the solar eclipse (facebook, twitter etc), create a wiki about what they have found and contribute to existing wikis to expand their knowledge in the area.  By creating their wiki (and contributing to existing ones), they are adding to the current pool of knowledge about solar eclipses.  So at the end of this “assignment”, students will not only have increased knowledge about solar eclipses, but they will also have become proficient in finding information online (and assessed the information for accuracy, and quality), used social marketing for an educational purpose, and created and contributed to wikis.