Learners of Today

As a way of getting information changes, the construct on learning has been changed as well. Now, people create and share knowledge, so the previous learning theories that perceive learning occurs inside a person is challenged since the learning could occur outside of a person with the help of technology. Using computers, learners need not memorize and manipulate certain knowledge by themselves. Instead, they need to search and evaluate new knowledge by connecting to each other. Siemens (2005) says, in his theory connectivism, “the pipe is more important than the content within the pipe”, which means it is more important to build connection to new source of knowledge than what you really have in your hand. According to this new way of perceiving learning, we could analogize new type of learner as follows.


Today, learners are like bees. Bees who are in charge of finding food sources make their journey to look for honey. When they find a good food source, they signal to other bees by dancing. Then, other bees come to carry the honey but also share their information about other food sources and their qualities. In this way, bees create a network of food supplies in which they keep giving and receiving information about the state of resources found. Depending on the resource available this network can expand or decrease in size. And sometimes it just dies out If all the food supplies were depleted. Likewise, learners make their way to look for the information. When they find good information, now they share it by connecting to other learners. However, this information sharing is both ways since learners are giving and receiving what they found, namely, they communicate. Also, like the food sources of bees, information today is not absolute. It keeps changing and disappearing as the society and technology change. And this is why networking is important as the video “the network is the learning” says. One needs to link to others “to stay in current” in ones’ field since if one is disconnected, he or she does not adapt to change, namely, might possess out of date knowledge. These days, we all need to be aware of this trait of information and navigate ourselves to look for what we want and make a connection each other, instead of only believing knowledge in our hand.