Blog Assignment #7

The Network Student

The Network Student is an excellent approach to get students to understand the future of technology in the educational society. It gives students a chance to better their education and higher their learning by building their own personal learning skills. I am assuming, from the video presented, that students will be basically teaching themselves with only a little help from the instructor.
My reaction to this video is a little curious. Mainly because I am in favor of old-school teaching methods. I like the students looking to the teacher for their concerns and questions; although the teacher does not have all of the answers, in my opinion, it gives the teacher a sense of importance and keeps the teacher on his/her toes. The video presented the idea of connectivism. This is a theory that presume that learning occurs as part of a social network of many diverse connections and ties. However, this raises the concern of students being distracted by social networking. Not that it could not be controlled, but it is an issue.
Connectivism only raises a few concerns when it comes to education, but it seems as if it will help more than harm it. Connectivism makes blogging, Googling, Wikispace, etc. a learning experience. It presents a wide range of connects and presents a new learning opportunity with every informational source. To answer the question of "Why do the network student need his teacher?", she/he is used again as a "filter". Teachers are going to help the students get connected with the world. The teacher is the incubator; the core to the learning apple.

A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment
In this video we see how/why students these days are more interested in learning the harder subjects such as math and science. For example, we are introduced to a 7th grader who finds that learning with her own PLE, she is able to experience fun, independence,and responsibility while enlarging her knowledge and exercising her brain. This is a good experience and a skill that can be utilized throughout her life. I see a lot of similarities when it comes to her PLE and my PLN. We both are able to connect to others with different or same opinions as our own and we get to learn and do our work. By the end of the video, the narrator reassured the viewers of the question that was asked earlier. Will technology distract students from learning? The answer is no. Technology enlarges the students resources and only helps the learning process.