The Learner Bee

After reading Siemens' article and viewing the video "The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature", I can liken the "learner" to that of a honey bee. The learner, or worker bee, travels through nature looking for flowers from which to gather pollen. Pollen cannot be taken from just any plant, so the bee must decipher and recognize which flowers or plants will supply the correct pollen for the hive. Then the bee extracts what he needs and takes it to the hive. There, hundreds of other individual bees are also bringing what they each found to be useful from the outside world into the hive. Then, all of the individual bees add their contributions. The hive survives only upon the connection and synthesis of each bee's bit of pollen. Once added together, this creates the honey that comes from the hive. Each bee will then individually benefit from the honey that is produced. As the hive grows, old bees pass and new bees are born. The honey created will fuel the new bees, who in turn, will add back to the hive.

I best understand Siemens' theory through the quote, "The starting point of connectivism is the individual." It is then the individual who contributes to a "network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feeds back into the network, and then continues to provide learning to the individual." I like this idea because it allows for individuals to have an impact on a large body of knowledge. Honey can be seen as a loose analogy for knowledge and information because it is not permanent nor guaranteed to last forever. The taste, texture and quantity of the honey depends on what the bees bring to the hive, therefore the honey created today might be different from what was created 5 years ago or 5 years from now. It all depends on what was available and what the bee deemed sufficient for the production of honey.

I am not an expert on bees, hives or honey, so there might be flaws in this analogy. However, I feel it is somewhat useful because the production of the hive depends on its individuals. One of the quotes that caught my attention from the video was "our desire to externalize our thoughts" and the "power of connecting in an external fashion". The hive might represent the connections being made by each bee's contribution for the greater good.

While the article outlining connectivism proved to be somewhat thick to understand, I am refreshed by the new approach to education. I think that the more we model instruction off of how people actually learn, the more effective we will be for our students. I agree that externalizing thoughts and making connections is such a vital part to our learning process, and I hope to keep those desires in mind when I plan lessons. I do not have many memories of K-12 education that involved making my own connections, so I hope to bring that into my classroom. If students cannot connect my lessons to any part of their lives, then I need to work at how I present my material.