Sunday, February 13, 2011

A learner is like a computer: they both have imaginary pipes.



Working in retail computer sales has had a profound impact on the way I conceptualize technology.  When customers ask me to what variables to consider when examining processor speeds, for example, I tell them that there's three things you can consider:


1.  Number of cores in the processor:  How many pipes are there?  (How many channels can information pass through?)
2.  Base model, i3, i5, or i7:  How big are the pipes? (How much information can they hold?)  
3.  Ghz (gigahertz): How fast can those pipes push information to you?


It's not necessarily accurate, in that it's a gross oversimplification of what actually goes on inside of a computer.  It is, however, a nice way to give someone who doesn't know what wireless internet is an idea of what these miraculous machines can do.


While reading George Siemens' article on connectivism, a learning theory that reorients how we view learning in light of recent developments in technology and information sharing, I was reminded of my commonly used metaphor.  Commenting on how learning can be newly conceptualized, Siemens writes, "the pipe is more important than the content within the pipe," i.e., our ability to detect patterns across unrelated concepts, find out how to retrieve new information, and determine which information is valid, is more important than our ability to retain the information itself. The same is true for a computer:  it doesn't matter what it's actually processing; miles of code means nothing until it's been organized and translated into a legible product or tangible action.  It's the same way with information and learners- having a large store of knowledge is pointless when a learner doesn't know what to do with it.  What's so beautiful about this metaphor is it's implication of movement:  in both computers and humans, information is not a pool that accumulates, but rather something that is constantly passing through us.  We're exposed to an enormous amount of information every day, but we retain a small amount of it.  Computers use temporary files, caches, streaming; they retrieve and present information and 'forget' it just as quickly.


What, then, does this mean for instructors of these newly conceived learners? In a video explaining his thoughts on instruction and human nature, Siemens explains that "Our challenge then, as educators, is finding a way to value and to foster that human need that we have to be express about our ideas, and to focus less on trying to bring knowledge into the mind of a person, and more on developing the skills of our learners."  We need to help build good pipes; instruction should be geared toward not the accumulation and/or retention of pieces of information, but evaluation, manipulation, and creation of information.

1 comment:

Maryanne said...

Your analogy works well and I'll have to keep in mind your info on computers at the beginning of the post for my next computer update!