Transcript for connectivism

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Special thanks to Lee LeFever of Commoncraft

for granting permission to use his brilliantly simple design.

This, my friends, is a true story.

A student at 21st century high school

studying American Psychology

as part of his Contemporary Issues class,

but it could be any topic.

He attends classs 3 days a week, two days online

He doesn't have a textbook

His teacher almost never lectures. She's a student of connectivism,

a theory that presumes that learning occurs as part of a social network of many diverse connections and types

This network is made possible through various tools of technology

The tools themselves are not as important

as the coneections made possible by them.

This teacher empowers his students to take control of their learning

and make new connections with others

who will strengthen the learning process.

Before our student embarks on his learning adventure,

He must spend sometime building his Personal Learniing Network.

He practices finding valid websites about the American Psiche

He is taught how to assess and value information to ensure its credibility.

He uses google scholar and his school libray database

to search for scholarly, peer reviewed articles on his topic.

When he finds a website or an article that is worth it,

he posts it to his social bookmarking site,

a place where people share URLs they have bookmarked on specific topics

He finds other people who've bookmarked sites about the American Psiche

and he shares the sites he has found.

Next, he searches for blogs that others

have written about the American Psiche.

He understands that blogs often reflect opinions

rather than cold heart facts.

Based on what he has learned so far about the American Psiche

he can choose to comment on these blogs

and offer his own informed point of view for discussion.

In order to manage these blogs, he uses a reader to subscribe to them.

That way he can tell when a blogger posts an update.

Once our student builds a knowledge base,

he creates his own blog to post reflections about what he has learned.

His classmates, and virtually anyone in the world,

can visit his blog and comment on

his informed opinions.

Twenty first century student loves his MP3 player

but there's more on that device than his favourite music.

He subscribes to a number of audio and video podcasts

to support his learning.

Through Itunes U he has access to

thousands of courses recorded by

actual professors from Standford, Yale, Cambridge

Open University and countless others.

In fact, he finds a lecture from a course called "Social Psychology"

Offered at UC Berkerley.

He literally has access to the best professors in the world.

While researching his topics

he stumbles upon a documentary about the American Psiche

A Dutch born Canadian immigrant film maker crosses

America to interview Americans about their homeland.

Our student emails the film maker who

agrees to video-conference with the class

to discuss the documentary

By the way, our student knows a few tricks

for finding experts.

He also knows that it never hurts to askl

People usually love to share their knowledge and expertise,

specially with students.

As a few weeks pass, our student is busy reading

the up-to-the-minute virtual textbook he has created

in his social marker account and RSS reader

His learning project combinates in the creation of his choice

Perhaps a video he posts to avideo showing site

an American Psiche wiki from which others can learn

or a Voicethread to which others can comment

Regardless of the medium, he is showing his organization of this knowledge

with the rest of the world so that next students of American Psiche

can learn from his hard work.

The twenty first century student network

includes a wide range of connections

each one a new learning opportunity.

There is more to connected learning than what you see in this project,

Think that it's just the beginning

Information management will be a major challenge in the 21st century

RSS makes it possible for anyone to subscribe to

just about any changing content on the internet.

New syncronous communication tools

are emerging nearly every day.

All of these tools make it easier for our student

to connect with new contents and learn effectively from those he already knows.

So, why does he even need a teacher you ask?

good question!

She's the one who teaches him how to build this network

and take advantage of learning opportunities.

She offers guidance when he gets stuck,

She shows him how to communicate properly

and ask respectfully help from experts

She shows him how to differentiate between good information

and propaganda how to vet a resource,

how to turn a websearch into a scavanger hunt

and get excited when he finds that pearl of content

She helps him organize those mountains of information

In her heart she hopes that when he leaves her class

he¡ll maintain his learning network and use it to navigate his future.

and creatively solve the worlds problems.

These are the skills he will need in the 21st century

This has been a connectivism production

subtitles by advancedenglish2 class (http://advancedenglish2.wordpress.com)