Wow & Wonder – Week 3

Wow – The notion of connectivism in the context of learning to the extent that the author emphasizes it is a new idea for me. In today’s rapidly changing world, we are frequently faced with situations where additional knowledge is required and may not be immediately available through conventional means. In these settings, I can understand the author’s point that having an interconnected learning network to draw from is an important skill in being able to quickly pivot and address the challenges that we face. This ability is even more pronounced when considering the increasingly shortened life cycle of information today. What we learned 5-10 years ago may not be relevant to current challenges. This rings especially true for me as I work through completing a career change as a mature student and am already witnessing the rapid evolution of learning styles and information obsolescence.

Wonder – While I have written previously about the concerning possibility of inaccurate information being sourced and propagated in PLNs, the author sheds a little bit of clarity on this when discussing the placing of value on nodes within this network. They write that ‘nodes that successfully acquire greater profile will be more successful at acquiring additional connections.’ In this way, the likelihood that a node will be deemed a valuable source of information worthy of fostering learning will depend on how well it is currently linked (i.e. how many people are treating it as a worthy learning tool and promoting it as such). Therefore, nodes that gain this recognition are more likely to continue receiving this recognition. While this doesn’t completely eliminate the possibility of inaccurate information being promoted within echo chambers, it does raise the point that the more connected a learning network is, the more users are curating and confirming the validity of the information in that network, so the more the user benefits as a learner.

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1).