The Networked Student By Wendy Drexler

This video had a very effective way of keeping my attention. In the video, a story was told about a student who was studying American Psychology. The student attends school three days a week and does two days on the Internet. He has no textbook. His teacher hardly ever lectures. His teacher is a student of connectivism. Connectivism is a theory that learning occurs as a part of social network of many diverse connections and ties. This was made possible by various tools of technology. The tools are said to be not as important as the connections made possible.

Anyways, the teacher empowers her students to take control of their learning and make new connections with others who will strengthen the learning process. The student must spend his time building his own personal learning network. He practices finding valid websites and to access the website to find its credibility. He use Google Scholar to find scholarly articles about his topic and he shares the site he finds. He looks at blogs from people around the world to see their point of view on his topic and he even has his own blog that he posts his point of view on. He uses reader to subscribe to his blog.

The student loves his MP3 and he uses it to subscribe to video and audio podcast. He can find lectures on his MP3 player and can also find documentaries. While he was looking at his virtual textbook that he had created in social book marking account in RSS Reader, he shares his knowledge to the world. Information management is said to be a big challenge in the 21st century.

So the question is does the networked student need a teacher. Well the answer is yes. The teacher is there to show him and teach him to build the network and guide him when he gets stuck. She is to show him how to communicate properly with experts so that he can respectively ask questions for help. She teaches him how to differentiate from good information and propaganda and helps him organize his information. She hopes that he will maintain his learning network to navigate his future.
I believe I am ready to teach a networked student. I will definitely use the advice that this video gave to make sure I do all I can to advance my student in technology and to make sure he or she is guided in the right direction for their future. To listen to this video go to: Wendy Drexler