Saturday, July 12, 2014

6-A-3 Responding to Connectivism

I had looked at the negatives of connectivism all week long since our group also had the "against" position, so I decided to look at Group A's wiki to find out the positives of connectivism at their wiki site:
https://summer14-bce-01.wikispaces.com/Group+A+6-A-1

Great job, Group A. I agree with the comments you made on the wiki. I loved the video of the connected student. It made the theory easier for me to understand.

The only problem I have with this theory is that it seems to be a LOT of work for the teacher. Throwing away the textbook is very intimidating for those of us who have been around for a while. Am I going to have to create a new lesson every day for them? Will they all work well this way?

I think there are good things and bad things about connectivism. I don't mind using it for some activities in my classroom, but not all students will find this a good way to work. We need to appeal to all of our students learning abilities.

1 comment:

  1. According to Downes (2007), connectivism assumes motivation by the student which does not describe the average American student. Many kids come to school because there is a compulsory attendance law. Others work for the grade but may not have a passion for a subject. I'll leave whether connectivism is a real learning theory for another day, but where this type of learning works best is with someone who has a passion for learning about a particular subject and is motivated to complete their work. This mostly means adult learners but can describe students. It also doesn't have to just mean class or school work. Connected learning can be used for hobbies, work, personal satisfaction of learning a new skill, etc. While I think we should try to teach students how to connect and find information, I don't see my Algebra students connecting online as they have a thirst for acquiring new algebraic skills.

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