The Great Migration [For CCK12]

One of the greatest phenomena of the human civilizations is the great population migrations. There are a few examples, such as the Chinese and the Indian diasporas, as well as the current Filipino diaspora where I am a part of.

When diasporas happen, there are culturally two events that occur simultaneously, one is that of assimilation and the other multiculturalism.

In a bigger sense, I believe that what we are experiencing right now is the greatest diaspora of all time, when we migrate from the analog world that we live in (or used to live in) to the digital world of the current generation. Much like the geographical migration, where in the parents made the decision to migrate, the children born in the new location seems more at ease at fitting in than their parents.

We are the 'parents' of the internet generation. We are the ones who decided to migrate and to forge ahead, thinking that this will give the next generation a better world, but it is our 'children' who function about it with utmost ease. It is not second nature to them, but rather the digital world is the only natural world for them.

And yet, we are in danger of losing connections to these our children, much like the parents of the migrant families tend to lose touch of their children. They either assimilate to the new culture or they impose their original culture on their children whose world is now different. I believe in doing both simultaneously.

The whole rationale of studying Emerging Technologies for me is that - to be able to adapt to the digital nation that received me as a migrant, the world where our students (our children) are natives. I believe that instead of imposing the old ways of learning, we need to understand how the world around them functions and to teach them along the new ways. I also believe that we have to celebrate the old ways of teaching and learning. To teach the values of community and team spirit through old tools such as sports and group projects; to be able to teach empathy through exposure and experience. This alongside teaching them how to google and create wikis, and how to blog and to facebook.

There are many examples of new age tools that we need to learn and navigate. We have to learn to assimilate. There are also a lot of 'old' things in the real world that is highly applicable to the virtual world. Most of these digital tools still yield to old-fashioned common sense of security and boundaries. "Don't talk to strangers" is an adage that serve well both the analog world as well as the digital world.

Connectivism is a new concept of learning, mostly brought about by the new technology. It seems that this technology has rewired how we learn, or so the theory suggests. I would like to explore this during this module. And it situation permits, I would like to use the concept of migration as the backdrop of my understanding of connectivism.