A New Philosophy…

I believe that technology has had a huge impact on the way that I learn both in an online and face to face environment. Technology has made so much more information accessible to me in so many ways that I am extremely grateful for its presence. I believe that the difference between my online and classroom learning experiences has to do with what I do with the information I am given. I a physical classroom, it is more about accessing the information, and giving it back to the instructor in some form in order to prove that I understand what the information is. At least that’s the way it was in some of my graduate education classes.

My online learning mimics much more of the experiences that I had as an undergraduate English major. We were never asked to explain, we were always asked to explicate – to take the literary work and undercover underlying meanings within it, find new uses for it, and make connections from it to other works. This directly ties in to the courses that I take online, the information is given, but I am expected to do much more with the information than regurgitate it back to the professor, I am required to make connections and draw inferences to show how the information I glean is meaningful to me, and in turn to my students.

Because of these experiences, my learning philosophy has changed. When I went into education 12 years ago, I wanted so badly to give students access to the information that they weren’t exposed to because their scope of the world seemed so small. Now in this Communication Age, students are bombarded with a wealth of information from a myriad of sources. I strongly feel as though the ideas of constructivism and connectivism have a definite place in every classroom. Teaching should not be teacher centered at all. Teachers should serve as the facilitators of knowledge, not as the keeper of knowledge. I believe that this is the ultimate non negotiable in every classroom.

When educators change their view of themselves from an all knowing wellspring of knowledge to a conduit for growth and change, they will see their pedagogical beliefs began to change in order to be more in tuned with the learners of our time. I am not saying that foundational education needs to go out the door, but how we build the house after the foundation is built should not be a cookie cutter experience. Students knowledge schemas should not look like a well packaged subdivision where all the “houses” of knowledge have the same floor plan and color scheme, they should be fresh, inventive, and free to make their own connections in a myriad of ways giving learners a sense of freedom and control that they have never had. Instruction that is designed in this way, will give a whole new meaning to the phrase “knowledge is power”, and will inspire groups of educators and learners for years to come.

 

Blogs responded to:

Aderonke – http://baedutech.blogspot.com/

Karen  – http://karenconnell10.blogspot.com/