Group items tagged

Teachers and lecturers are getting the lowdown on how to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo in an educational way.Most schools and colleges in the UK block access to the websites but they are missing out on their potential for education, a government-funded guide says.The report for Childnet International and funded by Becta, the government body for technology in learning, says while teachers and lecturers may be using social networking services they may not recognise the educational potential for their students.Schools could help students develop "e-portfolios" where learners can record their achievements and collect examples of their work, the guide suggests. Or teachers could use social networking services to set up groups that "semi-formalise" students' online communications and "document discussions and milestones as they go".Young people are more likely to have learned their social networking skills from their friends or classmates than from any formal instruction or support from adults.

Albert-László Barabási states that “nodes always compete for connections because links represent survival in an interconnected world” (2002, p.106).

Some questions to explore in relation to learning theories and the impact of technology and new sciences (chaos and networks) on learning: How are learning theories impacted when knowledge is no longer acquired in the linear manner? What adjustments need to made with learning theories when technology performs many of the cognitive operations previously performed by learners (information storage and retrieval). How can we continue to stay current in a rapidly evolving information ecology? How do learning theories address moments where performance is needed in the absence of complete understanding? What is the impact of networks and complexity theories on learning? What is the impact of chaos as a complex pattern recognition process on learning? With increased recognition of interconnections in differing fields of knowledge, how are systems and ecology theories perceived in light of learning tasks?

Constructivism suggests that learners create knowledge as they attempt to understand their experiences (Driscoll, 2000, p. 376).

I'm not saying these are necessarily bad things. I'm just saying they no longer exist as they once did b/c they relied on an inaccessibility/scarcity of information and the difficulty of forming and maintaining groups: two things media networks obviously do very well.