Connectivism and my Rambles

Connectivism is obviously a topic that is easy pickings for controversy. Many of the terms utilized to convey the meaning of it are vague- sometimes intentional and sometimes from lack of a better descriptive word. Our students don't understand basic step by step processes and we believe it is due to technology. For example, I will place a series of questions that all feed into each other and you have to answer the first one in order to understand the second one. Our students are so use to "multitasking" and having the ability to bounce around that they truly do not understand this concept.

In addition, I've noticed when they are given primary documents or resources, they do not read anything outside the main chunk of texts. I believe this is due to most of their information or personal reading coming from online; and they have essentially tuned out anything happening on the side, because it is usually an ad or something to that extent. It's been extremely tedious to teach them to analyze every aspect of a document and that the reading or chunked text might not have all the answers in there. I will make the title and author of the text painfully obvious, and they will still skip over it. In addition, I might put key information in a box or something to draw attention to it, and they simply skip over it.

I really appreciated Faustino’s point in the discussion- he was able to put in more eloquent language exactly what I was thinking.

There is this trend in the way Generation Z’s brains are functioning- they come in what all of this outside social media experience and that’s where a lot of their information comes from. Whether it is right or not. They learn how to search through twitter and instagram with hashtags. They are not having to practice their reading skills or even skimming. They simply search and get instantaneous gratification. They are being programmed to function at this level- were not seeing any physical changes obviously, but there is a clear trend. This generation is essentially rewiring their brains to go down this alternative path.

There could be an argument that they are more adaptive to technology in this state, but are losing important skills that are necessary. In addition, they aren’t becoming better adapted at technology by any mean. My school recently went one-to-one with laptops, and we were literally having to practice typing and how to do very basic tasks on a computer. We are several months in and most students still have not figured out basic computer skills. I’m sure this technology generation is simply getting access to very specific forms of technology earlier and are knowledgeable about that simply from practice and familiarity. Babies and toddlers are handed cell phones to entertain them when parents get desperate- I nannied and the babies were always after my phone. The parents both commented that when they are in public and can’t get their child to stop crying, they pass over the phone as a “last resort.” These kids are literally having smart phones in their hands before they are even a year old. Whereas I didn’t own a smartphone until I was in college. I don’t think this generation is growing up with an intuition approach to technology, but rather are experiencing specific methods of technology earlier and processing how to work that. Elementary school kids are blowing up on social media all of a sudden- my little cousin has an instagram, twitter, and facebook even though she’s in the third grade.

These kids are simply getting earlier exposure to these technologies, and in particular, social media. Now that social media has evolved, its viewed as a source of information for these kids. They join having very little formal education, big picture wise, and assume what they see is fact and standard. Completely disregarding that fact that these social medias are currently catering to your interests and alignment.