A Learner is Like a Chameleon

When I think of the typical 'learner' in today's 21st century, I think of someone who is able to adjust to the latest trends in society such as new technology, music, language use, education, media, etc. The way that humans have adapted to their surroundings over time reminds me of the chameleon and his ability to blend in, or fit in, with his environment.

The average learner today is rapidly and vastly connecting with people and information through organizations and databases through a process known as connectivism which is defined in the article "A Learning Theory for The Digital Age" by George Seimens: connectivism is "the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories.Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing." Through this process learners are networking and making decisions about what they want to learn, and as a result learning is meaningful and realistic.

George Seimens, on the video, The Changing Nature of Knowledge further explains the benefits connectivism. Seimens states, “The learners themselves, the connections they form with each other, the connections that they form with databases, with other sources of knowledge, is really the primary source of learning. So, in essence, the network becomes the learning; the network that the learners create.” In other words, we learn from the connections that we make with information and with others; we share knowledge and information. Seimens emphasizes, “Learning is really about the distribution of knowledge that occurs across an entire network.”