a digital age learning theory?

Learning theories have never really impressed me because I have always stood back, mused over them and thought that they were fine from one standpoint but they always appeared incomplete to me. They almost all seemed to be bound to one viewpoint. Like travelling on a train and seeing drab factory after factory until you look out of the other window across the river and splendid green fields.

A successful learning theory to satisfy me has to incorporate my favourite ‘tools’:

- the helicopter to hover above the idea
- the microscope to examine the detail
- the kaleidoscope to centrifuge the elements
- sleep to allow time for reflection and reforming ideas

Perhaps you can imagine how delighted I was therefore to happen across George Siemens’ theory of connectivism whilst kaleidoscoping the web. Suddenly there was a theory that instinctively rang bells about how I intuitively believe I think and about how the neurobiologist Manfred Spitzer and Vera F. Birkenbihl explain my neural network functions.

Then in that wonderful way that good news follows good news I found Siemens’ audio/slide lecture on the topic Connectivism and Web 2.0 at the University of Manitoba. I could even control it so that the first half could be played at the first sitting so that I didn’t lose the second half by reflecting on the first half. (If you don’t know what I mean then you may as well continue attending one hour lectures!) Why not try it and see if that reflects how you learn in this digital age?