A learner is like a.....

"A learner is like a human evolving from ape to humankind, you are able to see change and improvement over time"

When I first looked at this assignment it took me a while to comprehend the quote, “A learner is like a…”.  Some things that came to mind were words such as diverse, changing as the years pass, evolving, and improving.  Even though none of these terms fit into the quote directly; I thought that “A learner is like a human evolving from ape to humankind.  A learner is always learning at different speeds and the learning abilities of student are evolving and changing with time.  

  

“…Where we have come with computers, we are now at a point where an individual, can do significantly more with the aid of a computer which was never ever possible in the past..” This was stated by George Siemens in the video The Changing Nature of Knowledge, in which he explains his view on the changed nature of knowledge and his learning theory of connectivism.  Throughout this video clip, he used the word ‘connect’ many times.  One time that stuck out to me was when he said that individuals connect with others and form more connections with data bases that are the main forms of knowledge at this point in time.  The learning ability of the learner use to be in the minds of the individual, but with the complexity of our databases nowadays, students can connect to many outside sources that just solely are inside of their minds.  

As stated in the article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, George Siemens, states that connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories.  With the increased use of technology nowadays, students, adults, and children stay connected through the use of social networking, news, media, etc.  When individuals stay connected through this process, they then have the ability to stay connected through different fields and continue to improve their learning process.  The connectivist theory is evolving in ways that individuals connect such as, going from telegrams, to letters, to emails, to phone texts!