lively class

This is the more serious and reflective post...

This week's class session was pretty lively and fun. There were several things that seemed to really stand out as far as how the class views Web 2.0 in general and in relation to transferring knowledge or information.

As we spoke about the topic of connectivism, it was hard to escape the idea that truth exists externally and is constructed internally. Other learning theories might have made this external/internal relationship seem mutually exclusive, but there’s no reason for this to be the case. Web 2.0 technology is educationally useful in that the associated tools contain inherent knowledge. Also, use of the tools enable a sharing of knowledge. Instead of knowledge being unidirectional, going from one to many, it now is pan-directional, going from all to all (or many to many).

Validity seemed to be the unanimous issue, so I won’t say much about it here except that just because something is posted doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true or that the information is valid.

We are bombarded with information and we need to sift through it to find the facts. More importantly than ever, people need to learn how to learn effectively as early as possible. The ability to think critically and to define one’s own learning goals and educational agenda are necessary.

Personally, I really liked the analogies!