Connectivism and the Modern Student

            

  The modern student is very much like the modern bank customer. If we look at knowledge as currency like George Siemens does in his article, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age we can think of learners as bank customers who are able to withdraw knowledge from computers and networks all over the world in the same way that people who need money can withdraw it from any ATM in the world.  The same can be said for the way customers put money into a bank, as Siemens says, "Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual." In the same way that knowledge is fed into a network, people put money into a bank, and that money goes on to be dispersed among all of the customers but can also be retrieved when the original depositor needs it. 

What’s important about this analogy is that it changes how we look at education, where students are no longer just expected to just take in knowledge. As Siemens also says in the video, The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature, "As human beings we desire to externalize what's in our head." I think this is an important idea to take away from Connectivism, that we must let students put their knowledge back into the network and make sure that we are not only dishing out knowledge, but we give students the tools to find knowledge for themselves and express their interpretations of that knowledge.