Changing the Source of Knowledge

     In my eyes, most teachers in my home country today are still laying the role of information provider. They are the person who give instructions to the whole class while students are required to follow what teachers teach. During my school life, teachers are mostly like leaders or monitors who lead and control student's learning and receiving of knowledge.  Hence, students seldom search for the knowledge they need by themselves but ask for teacher's help. Generally, teachers are more like the bridge that connects students with knowledge. Even though technology plays an essential role in most people's life, it is seldom invited to the filed of teaching. This does not mean that most people are unaware of the power of technology, while they just forget to make use of it in knowledge learning.
     According to Siemens' article, in the view of Behaviorism, Cognitivism and Constructivism, learning is a process that "occurs inside the body" and will change one's behavior because learning comes with interacting with society all fail to explain one's learning. This impressed me a lot since we always said learning is a construction of a person. Through learning, s/he learns knowledge, social rules in the community, social skills with interacting with people and finally internalize what s/he learned and is able to self-monitor or self-assess himself/herself. While Siemens here points out that all learning theories focus on the process of learning but neglect what is learned. Staying in a society, especially learning with technology and information varies rapidly, people should use other  theory to reconsider learning. Under the influence of technology, one's experience is no longer the only source of learning. A person should know how to learning with experiences, from both personal and public. This reminds me of the students in Taiwan. Most of them use blogs or other online communities to build up relationship with others. When having some problem about personal life or study, some of them will choose to find some help from people they do not know on the Internet. Through collecting what is useful or reasonable to them, they transform these information into their own and will use to same manner to solve problems. Teachers are not the only person who can offer help or share experiences anymore.
     In addition, as people in "The Changing Nature of Knowledge" points out, "the nature of knowledge power" is changing. When he's studying, his learning experiences are different from students nowadays. For instance, although students in that age have computers, they think it is not that convenient using a computer with study. However, there are more and more learning networks and databases now. The connection that learners build with learning is actually through these online information--"the network becomes learning." Further, as knowledge changes quickly, people cannot just stay at what they already learned or even just learned because it will probably change in the next few minutes. Hence, the model and manner of learning have to be "reflective." I agree that people need to "stay current" about knowledge since one will never know what you believe now is still true or right later. Learning is not merely reading books or following teacher's instructions. It can also be done just through a computer or a phone; therefore, keep staying current toward knowledge and making best use of technological tools to assist one's learning is what people need to consider in 21st century. Nonetheless, as Siemens asserts about Connectivism, "decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital." Consequently, choosing what one need to know and learn is identically important when receiving knowledge with technology. What one needs to do is keep staying current and knowing what kind of information they are receiving simultaneously.