A Teacher is Like a...

A teacher is like a piece of a puzzle.

You may be asking yourself how this is so. With the explanation that follows I hope this will become more clear to you. I have just read a seminal article on Connectivism called Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, by George Siemens. There are several quotes in this article that discuss the idea of making connections and how these connections relate to one's own learning. One of the quotes that I found to be substantial says, "The starting point of connectivism is the individual. 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. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed." Another quote in this article states, "When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses." I have compared a teacher to a piece of a puzzle, because in the grand scheme of things, they are connecting to other pieces of the puzzle (other teachers, peers, students, etc...) and are learning based on these connections. There is only so much one individual (puzzle piece) can know or do, it is through this puzzle where we add all of the other pieces together that we can grow in our knowledge about the world around us.

There are also videos available on YouTube that George Siemens has posted about Connectivism. One such video is called The Impact of Social Software on Learning. A substantial quote from this video states, "The social software that we see in the form of blogs and wikis developed in order to enable these individuals in a quickly changing knowledge field to continue to stay current and to continue to learn from each other." This idea, again, relates to the idea of making connections among other individuals so that we may continue to learn from one another and expand our own knowledge.