Thursday, July 28, 2011

Network Connections

Networking through blogs, wikis and online collaboration chatrooms have changed my whole concept of learning. It has instilled in me that learning comes from everywhere and not just textbooks.  It allows me to open up my thoughts and not put limitations on my students when learning.  Everything they need to know does not exist in a textbook.  I have learned more and more that in my field of study (technology) the best lessons come from hands on work rather than paper and pencil assessments.

I have found that the best digital tools to use are those that are most comfortable to the user.  I am more comfortable using wikis as a learning instrument so it is what I use most.  The students are made comfortable because of its ease of use.  I believe that you cannot teach from something you do not know anything about.  Blogs are interesting in that they allow expression of thoughts as would an essay in the classroom. Digital tools are a mainstay in our learning community and should be used wisely and more often that it is in the classroom.
To learn new knowledge when I have a question I tend to first go to the internet.  I then use a variety of search engines to narrow down the information.  Then I have to decipher the good information from the bad information. Once this is done, I can ascertain which source to use as the information I need. I can also use email and chatrooms that cater to the subject. Since the information age has taken the educational realm by storm it provides the most useful information to educators.





Posted comments to minerclass.blogspot.com and  http://edtheory7105.blogspot.com/

2 comments:

  1. Hi Toney. I enjoyed your post, especially the way in which you noted that textbooks are not the only source of learning. It occurs to me that there are two primary sources of learning relevant to this discussion. The first is "content knowledge" and the second is "personal expression" (Possibly not the right terms but they made sense as I wrote them). Whereas textbooks have traditionally been relied upon for most learning, Constructivism and Connectivism seem to emphasize the importance of expression. With that in mind, do you envision significant changes in the textbook industry to accommodate the shift in focus? Is an eBook enough?

    Randall

    ReplyDelete
  2. Toney,
    I appreciate your hands on learning reference as I can agree that experience is a great teacher. Technology can extend our learning opportunities as we are not confined to text based instruction.
    Good post

    ReplyDelete