drinking the Connectivism koolaid

In reading about Connectivism, I felt enthusiastic about the future of learning, communication, and information access. Although we debated the potential for Connectivism to be the next great learning theory, I am persuaded to believe that it could be a powerful influence on the way we teach and learn in a our rapidly evolving world of information. This approach seems to take into account the things we know about learners (we are social beings, our language gives birth to our thoughts, etc.), as well as the networks that connect us and our knowledge/experience. I think we are ready to move beyond learning theories that focus inward and embrace a way of thinking about learning that is more external, more open. As Siemens tells us, we do not live in isolation, nor should we learn in isolation. It is through the networks we establish that we will make sense of our own thinking and establish a mechanism for ongoing learning for a lifetime. With connections becoming the primary focus of learning, the traditional hierarchies of learning will be broken down even further, thus bringing into question the role of instructor. In viewing learning as a networked phenomenon, knowledge does not reside with just one individual, as it commonly has in the past, but within communities and in a distributed manner.