The author, George Siemens, writes an essay supporting a new theory of learning – which he calls “connectivism”:
Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.
Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.
Need to reflect on this – I see elements that remind me of Dewey’s Pedagogy – indicating this theory is not so “new”.
[H/T to Howard Rheingold - http://twitter.com/#!/hrheingold]
