Learning in the Digital Age - Class #3

During our blogging activity, Kim demonstrated how she would like us to use the blogging technology in class. We replicated, in class, the blogging activities that she wants us to do at home. What I got out of this activity was mostly just doing the peer blog reviews. I have suprisingly changed my views on this activity from my previous blog. I think that my new view developed because the blogs were actually my peers whos knowledge, though vastly different, is more similar to my own. Whereas the blog lecture that we were assigned to read was new information to me. I think the notable conclusion that I drew was that laying a content groundwork for the blog assignment was extremely helpful and prevented the frustration that I felt while reading the blog lecture. I realized that my mind has been conditioned to a specific learning protocol: knowledgeable expert shares their knowledge of a subject, I am allowed to personally examine the material, and then my classmates and I share our perspectives on the topic with the expert as a facilitator, and finally I take away from the discussion the information that I find most notable. This was not the case in the blog/lecture where I was thrown into step three which caused me such discomfort. I think that connectivism theory should acknowledge the benefits of step 1 & 2 in learning.

Additionally, I was surprised with many of my classmates views on connectivism. There seemed to be an overwhelming opposition to the theory. From the comments that were made in class, I think that it is very hard to conceptualize connectivism theory in practice when traditional classrooms are not structured in this fashion. But with each criticism of the theory I was able to think of a way that technology tools could be used to emulate the traditional methods. Though using technology would initially be a lot of work to setup, implement and manage, I think that if carefully structured it could be just as effective as traditional methods and possibly more engaging!