Luddite No Longer

"Life is like a box of chocolates" and Learners are like Teachers Connectivism in Education What is connectivism? Connectivism is a learning theory that sees knowledge as networked and outside of an individual learner. "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." (Siemens)   In traditional educational models teachers filled their students with knowledge, knowledge that didn't change or adapt. Students were empty vessels waiting for knowledge to be dumped in by their teachers. Image Not Mine In today's system, or at least in my classroom, that belief of teachers as gatekeepers and holders of knowledge has changed. Teachers are no lon...

Do you visit many websites throughout the day? Have you ever been on a site and thought to yourself, "Wow, this is really interesting/neat/cool." So you saved that site to a word document or to a list of websites on your browser or you hand-write it on a post-it note at your desk. Then a few days or weeks or months go by and you remember that awesome website you found, only now you cannot remember where you saved it. If this has happened to you, not to worry, you are not alone. I, myself, have been known to save websites on a word document, write them on a post-it note only to lose the post-it, and save them in a huge list of bookmarks that I forget about. Social Bookmarking is an online tool for organizing and saving URLs and other content. Not only can you save all of those websites in one place, but you can also share them with others.        VS.                 ...