Connectivism

"Education has in the words of Edgar Morin one vital task: to prepare individuals for the vital combat for lucidity...to prepare individuals to be a part of society, to prepare individuals to contribute, to create, to share, to interact."
George Siemens is Founder and President of Complexive Systems Inc., a learning lab focused on assisting organizations develop integrated learning structures to meet the needs of global strategy execution. He is the originator of Connectivism theory and author of the article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and the book Knowing Knowledge - an exploration of the impact of the changed context and characteristics of knowledge. Connectivism is a hypothesis of learning which emphasizes the role of social and cultural context. "In connectivism, the starting point for learning occurs when knowledge is actuated through the process of a learner connecting to and feeding information into a learning community...In the connectivist model, a learning community is described as a node, which is always part of a larger network. Nodes arise out of the connection points that are found on a network. A network is comprised of two or more nodes linked in order to share resources..." (read more here)
Siemens is actively involved in researching social media and networked technologies at the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University.
"As a concluding thought, my view is that the primary task of education in the future is to collapse its functions, its curriculum, its teaching methods, its very mode of enquiry down to the point of connectedness, why do connections form, what patterns do they leave when they form, what is the ultimate impact of that, how do we foster that as educators, how do we create structures that permit individuals to not be better corporate citizens but how we create that so that we have students and learners that leave our class spaces who are better citizens, who are better members of society, because to CHANGE EDUCATION is TO CHANGE SOCIETY"
Very complex but interesting and brilliant presentation.
-- go to George's blog
-- read about connectivism here
-- Networked Student