Learning at the Subatomic Level

A learner is like an atom.  At its core is the physical body, the brain, the person itself, a nucleus of protons and neutrons and internalized information: what the learner actually knows.  Floating in a hazy cloud around this nucleus is an electron field, composed of information that is easily accessible to the learner: his or her immediate network.

Few atoms are satisfied with their own electrons, however, and many create a variety of bonds with other atoms to form larger molecules and accomplish far more than each could individually, in a wholly unique way that never would have occurred to any of the atoms on its own.  In the same way, human beings share their knowledge pools and form networks of information, sharing and trading for a similar gestalt effect.  Without the outward projection of ideas, however, their could be no learning process; much like an atom without electrons, we would be stable, or stagnant.  A learner must have an immediate network before they can connect to a larger one.  As connectivist theorist George Siemens says: "We ourselves need to externalize our thoughts, in order for us to have the ability to connect with other individuals" (The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTgWt4Uzr54&list=PL3E43054A8703F57A&index=3).

But by reading this post, you have joined (and hopefully benefited from) my own small network, which became part of a larger network (the hosting website) the moment I posted it.  The fact that you have learned to successfully navigate the tremendous super-network of the internet in order to arrive at this page will be more instrumental to growing your personal learning cloud than anything I could possibly teach you.  According to Siemens: "The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe", which he explains as meaning that a person's ability to learn what they need to know is far more useful than what they actually know (Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age: http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm).  For a third metaphor, pretend learning is like driving a car.  It doesn't so much matter where your car is currently parked; as long as you have the appropriate networks (in this scenario, a well-laid road system), you can get anywhere you need to be.