We are evolving from being cultivators of personal
knowledge to being hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest. - Carr
This is another quotation from The Shallows that I've thought a
lot about over the holiday period. From
a personal point of view I disagree with this.
There are times when I am a hunter-gatherer, for example when I want to
buy something. Recently when I decided
to buy a new external hard drive I searched online to see if it was better to
order it and have it delivered using Amazon, or if it was cheaper to drive to a
shop and just pick one up. I also
searched to see where the nearest store was that had them on special offer and
then used Google maps to find out how to get to the store. Just like the hunter-gatherer, this was
something I needed that day. The
information didn’t need to be stored anywhere in my long-term memory – after
buying what I wanted I was probably never going to use that information again.
Most of what I use the internet for, however, is connected
with my role as a teacher. The people
I follow on Twitter are mostly educators, the links I follow via their tweets
are ones that make me think deeper about teaching and learning, or they are
ones that point me to online resources or apps that I can use with my
students. The blog posts I read push my
thinking in new directions or offer me a different perspective. This is definitely a case of cultivating my own
personal knowledge. Nobody at my school
is encouraging me to do this, so it is purely for myself and it has taken me deeper and further as an educator than
any other form of professional development in the past 3 years.
To me, what you get out of your online connections is very
much determined by what you put in. The
hunter-gatherer doesn’t invest much in the local environment – he takes what he
needs to eat that day and probably roams around over a large area as he does
it. The cultivator on the other hand
invests a lot into a small patch of earth.
He’s concerned with the quality of what he grows there, he nurtures his
crop. With a PLN it’s the same. You have to put something in in order to get
something out. It involves giving as
much as it involves taking.
Photo Credit: Sour Cherries by Audrey
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