new knowledge is never-ending

I find the theory of connectivism very interesting.  To me it seems like a bit of a combination of other learning theories like behaviorism and cognitivism.  I am not sure yet if I believe the connectivism theory to be the best or not.  The fact that “over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we live,” (George Siemens, 2004) is definitely something I agree with though.  Even in the past ten years I see a huge difference in the use of technology for the average person on the average day.  When I was in fourth grade ten years ago none of my friends had cellphones and some of my friends had computers at home that they used to play games.  Today when I talk with kids the same age, a majority of them have their own cellphone in my town, and very many of them are starting to experiment with social networking suck as Facebook and MySpace.  This is a crazy thought to me. How young should kids start getting into things like this.  There are safety factors that should be taken into consideration. On the other hand, the fact that they are already involved in these online communities at such a young age, leads to great potential in being fully involved in such things as adults.  Knowledge involving technology is never ending.  New information is learned everyday.  New people join online communities everyday.  More knowledge is shared everyday.

“Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where,” (George Siemens, 2004)  This, Siemens says, is a significant new learning trend.  It challenges me a little bit in that some young people now do have so much at their fingertips and the click of a button, that it deteriorates some of their will to learn the things that had to be done in the past.  By this I basically mean, some young people are becoming very lazy.  When I asked a first grader a question while working in his classroom, he said immediately “I don’t know” so I said well take a second and think about it.  He, without thought, said right back to me, “look it up on google if you care so much.” This naturally took me by surprise, not only because it was rude, but because it is true.  If I want an answer, I don’t really have to do a lot of thinking, because I can look it up on the internet and get a better answer then I could ever come up with myself for almost anything.  This worries me because I am afraid it will slowly take away the creativity in exploring things for the pure love for the knowledge.

“Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories,” (George Siemens, 2004)  Everything is always changing around us.  It is important to be able to incorporate things from all kinds of different places to be a successful learner.  Because new information is always becoming available, we need to be available to accepting the changes and fitting them into our world of teaching and learning to prepare for tomorrow, and for the future.