- [Narrator] Humming.
Special thanks to Lee LeFever of Common Craft
for granting permission
to use his brilliantly simple design.
This, my friends is a true story.
A student at 21st Century High School
is studying American Psychology
as part of his Contemporary Issues class.
But, it could be any topic.
He attends class three days a week, two days online.
He doesn't have a textbook.
His teacher almost never lectures.
She is a student of connectivism,
a theory that presumes that learning occurs
as part of a social network
of many diverse connections and ties.
This network is made possible
through various tools of technology.
The tools themself are not as important
as the connections made possible by them.
This teacher empowers her students to take control
of their learning and make new connections
with others who will strengthen the learning process.
Before our student embarks on his learning adventure,
he must spend some time building
his personal learning network.
He practices finding valid websites
about the American psyche.
He is taught how to assess and validate information
to ensure its credibility.
He uses Google Scholar and his school's library database
to search for scholarly peer reviewed articles on his topic.
When he finds a website or article that is worthy,
he posts it to his social bookmarking site,
a place where people share URLs
they have bookmarked on specific topics.
He finds other people who have bookmarked sites
about the American psyche
and he shares the sites he has found.
Next, he searches for blogs that others have written
about the American psyche.
He understands that blogs often reflect opinions
rather than cold hard facts.
Based on what he has learned so far
about the American psyche,
he can choose to comment on these blogs
and offer his own informed point of view for discussion.
In order to manage these blogs,
he uses a reader to subscribe to them
that way he can tell when a blogger posts an update.
Once our student builds a knowledge base,
he creates his own blog to post reflections
about what he has learned.
His classmates and virtually anyone in the world
can visit his blog and comment on his informed opinions.
21st Century student loves his MP3 player,
but there's more on that device than his favorite music.
He subscribes to a number of audio and video podcasts
that support his learning through iTunes U
he has access to thousands of courses
recorded by actual professors from Stanford, Yale,
Cambridge, Open University and countless others.
In fact, he finds a lecture from a course
called Social Psychology offered at UC Berkeley.
He literally has access to the best professors in the world.
While researching his topics,
he stumbles upon a documentary about the American psyche.
A Dutch born Canadian immigrant filmmaker
crosses America to interview Americans about their homeland.
Our student emails the filmmaker
who agrees to video conference with the class
to discuss the documentary.
By the way,
our student knows a few tricks for finding experts.
He also knows that it never hurts to ask.
People usually love to share their knowledge and expertise,
especially with students.
As a few weeks pass,
our student is busy reading the up to the minute
virtual textbook he has created
in his social bookmarking account and RSS reader.
His learning project culminates
in the creation of his choice.
Perhaps a video he posts to a video sharing site
at American Psyche Wiki
from which others can learn
or a voice thread to which others can comment.
Regardless of the medium,
he is sharing his organization of this knowledge
with the rest of the world
so the next student of the American psyche
can learn from his hard work.
The 21st Century student network
includes a wide range of connections.
Each one a new learning opportunity.
There's more to connected learning
than what you see in this project.
Think that it's just the beginning.
Information management will be a major challenge
in the 21st century.
RSS makes it possible for anyone to subscribe
to just about any changing content on the internet.
New synchronous communication tools
are emerging nearly every day.
All of these tools make it easier for our student to connect
with new contacts and learn effectively
from those he already knows.
So, why does he even need a teacher you ask?
Good question.
She is the one who teaches him how to build this network
and take advantage of learning opportunities.
She offers guidance when he gets stuck,
she shows him how to communicate properly
and ask respectfully for help from experts.
She shows him how to differentiate
between good information and propaganda,
how to vet a resource,
how to turn a web search into a scavenger hunt
and get excited when he finds that Pearl of content.
She helps him organize those mountains of information.
In her heart, she hopes that when he leaves her class,
he'll maintain his learning network
and use it to navigate his future
and creatively solve the world's problems.
These are the skills he will need in the 21st century.
This has been a Connectivism Production.