After reading the article and watch videoes, I came up with an interesting analogy to illustrate today's learner. A learner is like a farmer. The reason why I think this analogy is interesting is that Connectivism has been brought up along with the development of techonolgy, but I compare a learner to a farmer who may be far away from the computer techonolgy. I grew up in a farm and I helped my parents with working in the farm so I know pretty well how they work.
First of all what a farmer does is planting seeds and harvesting later but the farmer will gather much more produce than he plants. Planting seeds is like making network. If a learner constructs network(planting seeds), the learner will learn much more knowledge(harvesting farm produce). In Siemens' video Networking is the Learning(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpbkdeyFxZw&feature=PlayList&p=3E43054A8703F57A&index=4), he mentioned that adding a nod to a network increases entire network exponentially.
In addtion, the farmer cannot gather produce unless the farmer does keep sound relationship with nature. This fact is connected to one of the principles of connectivism that is mentioned in the article. In the article, he wrote "Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. " (Sienmens, G. 2005, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age) Therefore the learner can learn more knowledge when they keep staying in the network and working on the network building.
3 years ago
Alice what a great analogy! It's very interesting and totally appropriate. I completely agree with you. I would also add that like a farmer the learner may choose to harvest different crops (having different networks on different subjects) or focus on only one.
ReplyDeleteAlice,
ReplyDeleteI like your focus on nurturing the network relationships. Just like the farmer tending his crop, we need to nourish our networks by providing input in order to reap a bountiful harvest.
Alice. We have something in common! I too have a past with farming, and "tending" to the elements that can make a crop thrive. I worked on a strawberry farm when I was younger. I think my connection to network relationships is that, like picking berries, it's nice to stop and enjoy along the way. There are many social networks that provide different tastes to keep us going.
ReplyDeleteYou have a very interesting analogy. I like how you said that farmers get more crops than they planted just like students will learn more when they network with other. It's interesting to see the different analogies our classmates came up with. This was a very thought provoking assignment.
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