Blog#7

Networked Student

  In the video Drexler asked the question, Why does the network student need a teacher? The teacher in the video is called a teacher of connectivism. Connectivism is defined by Drexler as learning that is part of a social network by many diverse entities.  In the video you will see a student that collected  information on American Psychology. After collecting the information from his school library, Google Scholer and many other sites the Network Students is ready to create a (PLN) known as a Personal Learning Network. In the PLN he added bookmarks to sites that would be beneficial to his topic of choice. Lastly he creates a blog page to comment and post blogs so that the Network students that follow behind him will have less work to do. 

My Comment and the answer to the question why dose the network students need a teacher?

The answer was simple, to show him how, where and why. You see after watching the video many people would say if he did all this research and found all the information why would he need a teacher. You have to understand where he came up with the vision to create such and idea like the network student.  Many people think just because young students are able to get on facebook and twitter they're able to search credible sites and use this information as a learning tool well if so, congratulation you have a gifted child. In most cases this does not happened. Students need to know where to start and this information comes from a teacher who has tried and tried to come up with a idea to make their students more of a independent learner. Yes I like that term independent learner a lot more then the network student, but that is just my opinion. I think that if we had more teachers like Dr. Strange the United States rank education increase. The video is simply the same argument he voices in his classes lets get away from the burp back education that we   used so many years ago. So my challenge to my readers, if you're going to school to be a teacher or if your currently a teacher  you can either chose to be a thermometer in your class and adjust to the temperature. Are you can be a thermostat and set the temperature in your class and at your school. I am simply saying you can be like all the other teachers at your school and give the same burp back educations or you can train network students and independent learners. The choice is yours! 

So as a Special Education Major  I plan to take something from each of my post and see just how this will work in a special education class. This is the first time I decided to do this so please give me comments, so I can prepare my mind to be a Special Education teacher in the 21st century and develop independent learners or as seen above the Network Student. I think this would be a great idea to introduce in the special educations class room. Although I feel like it will take a lot of work to do with the new way teachers are being trained it can happened. By challenging your students to do more and not giving them limits they will surprise you. Products are already being used in the class such as computer to help them communicate so by  showing them how to search Google as a educational resource on the computer it would definitely be a plus.

 

Welcome to My PLE!  By 7th grade student

(PLE) Personal Learning Environment  Vs (PLN) Personal Learning Network, The major differences is there are no differences a (PLE) is a( PLN) and vise verse.  You can add bookmarks to sites and have email, twitter and facebook access to people that can help you with ideas and answer questions without having to search or look them up.