Connect to What Makes You Tick

As I have previously reviewed the concept of blogging and all of its potential roles in our daily lives, I have also highlighted its connection to the world of education. It is just as important for people using online platforms to be connected as it is for people using face-to-face means of communication. From the day we are born we use our interactions with other people to learn about ourselves and our surroundings. We learn to speak from our parents and we learn to read from our teachers. Interpersonal skills are learned from our friends and hobbies are learned from different resources throughout our lives. Continuous learning is the cornerstone of being an effective member of society and, in school, where children learn to actively participate in their development, is the best time to expand their means of exploration in every way we can.

Online learning is in an opportunity to expand on teacher instruction and student learning. Chapter two of "The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age", focuses on the idea of developing a connected learning model. In this chapter, the author focuses on the transition from a small local community of learning that generally isolates the learners, to a larger interconnected global network of learning that opens up doors to worlds that would otherwise remain unknown. (On page 27 is an illustration of the change that has occurred). But how does online learning excite the process?

Originally, learners only had access to a small amount of resources. Whatever literature was made available to them only collaborated with the information they may have gathered from lectures or personal conversation; the internet smashed these boundaries. Educated people began sharing their information, increasing the amount of literature available. Then, others began to respond to this information increasing the amount of thought surrounding the individual ideas. Soon after that other people stumbled upon these interactions and they begin to find interest in things they had never heard of.  None of these changes required the learners to hold a book or have a face-to-face conversation.

The process became an ongoing learning cycle and it has never stopped. Online sharing passed ideas along. It questioned and expanded upon those ideas. Most importantly it invited new learners to be a part of this idea expansion. Connected Learning Communities were formed. Learning communities occur in many different settings. Local communities, global networks, and bounded communities.

• Local communities are face to face communities that will work on changing the pace or learning process that is occurring within a certain building or school district. 
• Global networks are primarily online communities that pass information to people that may have never met or may never meet in the future. 
• Bounded communities can either be online or in person, however, they are focused on inquiry and going as deep as possible into the information about a certain topic. 

Utilization of all of these communities to pass along learning is absolutely key and the way the technology opens doors makes it the best way to be involved in all three. 

Please view a Video of a personal view of the Connected Learning Model