Siemens and Make it Stick

The Siemens article has discussion questions, so here we go!  I'm Making it Stick.  :)

1.  Make a Venn diagram?!  Hold that thought.  Let's look at Question 2.

2.  According to connectivism, how has the rapid increase of access to knowledge affected the way we should view knowledge?

I've only read through Siemens once and it was the first time I've really understood Connectivism this semester.  The rapid increase in access to knowledge has 1., decreased the "half-life" of knowledge by an incredible amount.  Basically, what you know has an expiration date on it and it's sooner than you realize.  So knowledge expires now, where as before, knowledge moved so slow that we didn't have to think about the expiration dates.  The other thing that changes about our view to knowledge is, you may not actually have to know things for knowledge to exist.  You may not know what percent the average global temperature has been rising, but you could google it.  Googling it and knowing it might be more equivalent than we actually realize.  

3. Think of the most recent job you have held. How did the principles of connectivism affect the way you learned in that job?  

Now that I'm thinking about it, I think connectivism is an easy metaphor for my job.  In theory I've had the same job for 20 years-  I'm a sign language interpreter.  But in reality, I go to different places all the time and jump into people's lives at a certain point in their trajectory, and then I jump back out.  Sometimes I never see them again, sometimes I might end up working with them (intermittently) for years.  When I start my day, people start talking and I start interpreting, I in fact do not know exactly what they are talking about-  I wasn't there yesterday, or the day before, or even in the meeting right before this meeting.  What's important is that I can connect what one person is saying to what the other person is saying and make meaning out of it.  Some interpreter's won't do this kind of work, and insist on only going places where they know exactly what is going on.  I thrive on it.  I work some days with a deaf doctor and some days with a deaf lawyer--  it's so impossible to keep up with what they are doing, since I don't go every day, that I've learned to be ok with not knowing.  I've learned to do a good job by keeping up my networks.  I read the paper, I watch the news, I keep up to date on what people are talking about, and I take what I know and make connections.  

4. How would you summarize the main points of connectivism if you had to explain it to a friend with no background in this area?

I would explain that before Connectivism, all theories of learning were designed before the internet hit us.  The biggest take-away of Connectivism is that learning and knowledge are different than they were before the internet, or the internet age allows us to see learning and knowledge in a way we never could before.  And what is that big difference?  The biggest difference is "the pipe is more important than the content in the pipe."  Because the actual content of knowledge changes so fast, knowing "things" is not as important anymore.  Those "things" expire now, much faster than they ever did.  What is important is a person's individual connections to a network of places to get information.  Knowing that the Battle of Normandy happened in 1066 is not as important as knowing how and where to look up information about the Battle of Normandy when you need it.  Then once you looked it up, knowing how to synthesize that information into the current Brexit discussion you're having.  The ability to recognize patterns is more useful than knowing facts, so therefore it's more important than plain facts.  This changes a couple of very long-standing beliefs:  you actually can keep knowledge in a machine, and since you are creating meaning by making those connections, it means that your strongest "pipes" in your network are going to dominate what things mean.  And your "pipes" will be different than other people's "pipes".  

My thoughts:  I think saying that the internet has changed learning and knowledge is a bit of a cop out.  If Connectivism works, isn't it possible that it's always been true, we just could never see it before?  It might not have mattered much before when information moved slower.  But isn't it possible that the pipe has ALWAYS mattered more than the contents of the pipe?  I don't hate Connectivism-  I think it's really interesting.  But saying the internet has changed the basic fundamentals of knowledge and learning feels...  weak.  We might have never noticed it before, but I think it's possible that the pipe has always been more important than the contents.