Blog Post #7

The Networked Student

The Networked Student, created by Wendy Drexler, depicts an actual project completed by her own high school students. In her video, she tries to give parents, teachers, colleagues, and students a better understanding of how networked learning works.

The video starts off with a 21st century high school student studying American Psychology. He meets in class three days a week and two days online. There are no books and the teacher hardly ever lectures. She is a student of connectivism.

So what is connectivism? "Connectivism is a theory that presumes learning occurs as part of a social network of many diverse connections and ties." The student uses many different resources and communication tools to collect facts and create his/her own thoughts and reflections about his/her topic on a blog he/she creates. Tools such as google search, wikis, blogs, and rss makes it easier for students to connect with new contacts and to learn effectively with the ones he already knows. What a great way to integrate technology in the classrooms!

So the question is asked "Why does a networked student even need a teacher?"

According to Wendy Drexler's video, the following is a list of reasons why a networked student needs a teacher:
1. His teacher is the one that teaches him how to build these networks and take advantage of learning opportunities.
2. She offers guidance when he gets stuck.
3. She shows him how to communicate properly and ask respectively for help from the experts.
4. She shows him how to differentiate between good information and not so good information.
5. She shows him how to vent a resource.
6. She shows him how to turn a web search into a scavenger hunt, and to get excited when he finds that pearl of content.
7. She helps him organize those mountains of information.
8. In her heart, she hopes that when he leaves her class, he will maintain his learning network and use it to navigate his future and creatively solve the world's problems.

After watching the video, the same question, "Why does the networked student even need a teacher?," popped into my mind. I understand that technology is extremely important in the classrooms because teachers need to be up to date on today's technology and how it is used. But why? The answer to that question is because we live in a fast-paced world that is in a state of constant change mainly due to the advancements of technology everyday.

As a future educator, I'm worried that one day teachers will become completely obsolete as a result of technology and will then be replaced and no longer needed. If you really sit and think about it, technology is already starting to take over. Schools now are starting to replace textbooks with ebooks. Students have a computerized tablet that they connect to the school's network and download the reading material that they need for that particular class. White boards and chalk boards are slowly being replaced with SMART boards. This SMART board is connected to a computer.

I have recently learned that teachers are no longer teaching students cursive handwriting. Cursive handwriting was such a big deal with teachers when I was in grade school. I remember hating my teachers in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade because all written work, which was just about everything we did, had to be written in cursive handwriting.

In schools today, even first and second graders are required to have flash drives so that their assignments done on the computer can be saved. This is already starting to eliminate the amount of actual writing, pencil to paper, that students do. When everything has to be typed and done on the computer, there is no need for actual writing. At this rate, schools will soon just omit learning how to write so that students will have more computer time.

I'm not bashing technology being used in classrooms nor am I saying that technology in education is a bad idea. There are several advantages and positive thoughts I have about integrating technology in the classrooms. But does anyone ever look at the negatives about this transformation in the education system? Everyone is different and processes information in a different way. Technology is not going to adhere to everyone's unique learning process. This is why we need excellent teachers so that no student is left behind.

So NO, I don't want to be a networked teacher. I want to be more involved than that with my students. After all, aren't teachers supposed to teach their students instead of sticking them in front of a computer and trying to make them learn something they don't know on their own?


2. A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment(PLE)

In the video, a 7th grader demonstrated how she uses her Personal Learning Environment every day in her science class. She discusses how every morning she checks the science agenda to see what she will be doing in class that day. Sometimes she has a video to watch and sometimes it's just assignments that need to be completed. She created a blog in which she post assignments and writes her reflections about what she did in class that day. She says that she really enjoys this way of learning because she has so much freedom. She is able to choose when and how she completes her assignments. She says that everything is done online, so there aren't any books, and everything is neat and organized. She says that she loves networked learning.

This 7th grade student's PLE seems almost identical to my Personal Learning Environment for EDM 310. There are no books because everything is done online. I have to check to see what assignments and projects I have for that week. Sometimes there are videos that I have to watch and post my reflections in my blog for class. This class is definitely unlike any other that I've ever taken before. It's a completely different way of learning because you aren't sitting in front of your teacher everyday. As of right now, I think that I'm a little undecided on whether or not I like this networked learning. I guess I will just have to see how the rest of the semester goes.