If you have taught in a virtual classroom, you realize how quickly technology evolves.  What I don’t think most faculty consider is the direct impact that has on how we learn.  Moore’s Law has (the notion attributed to Intel guru Gordon Moore that technical capabilities double roughly every 18 month) certainly   caught me by surprise on more than one occasion.  It seems just as soon as I master one tool, the tool evolves beyond my capacity leaving me in the dust.  In fact, I have seen the technical capabilities of the virtual classroom advance within the semester I taught.

The evolution of technology has eclipsed the evolution of humankind’s ability to absorb it.  However, a new way of thinking about this allows for the evolution of learning.  The podcast discussed this evolution, and gave a link to a blog on the topic.  http://connectivism.ca/ This new way of thinking is called Connectivism, and the virtual classroom three years from now will certainly need to understand this and adjust accordingly.  The idea behind Connectivism is in connecting to others we form competence.  The more connections we make, the more we learn.  What is different about this is technology allows for this activity, and “frees” us from having to remember.  Our knowledge becomes a collective stored in our connections.  The virtual classroom three years from today will have to therefore offer students much more dynamic functionality around organization and tagging content.  Otherwise, the learning will suffer.  This is a huge paradigm shift from traditional pedagogy and frankly andragogy.

For the most current thinking on this topic, I turned to Kevin Kelly founder of Wired magazine.   http://www.kk.org/ I saw Kevin speak last week on this topic at the Learn 2008 Conference at the Masie Center.  He talked at length about the evolution of learning due to this phenomenon.  The virtual classroom three years from now, will be that much more connected through the deployment and “perfection” of Web 2.0 and 3.0 tools.  The emergence of an entire second life through a virtual platform will have a particular impact on learning, particularly learning related to three dimensional topics.  For example, it will be much easier to train students on proper disaster recover procedures virtually than check clearing processes.  Regardless, as educators we will have to evolve as Connectivism grows.  Right now, there are many people who are not connected virtually.  As the social networking sites become more widespread, more people will be learning.  No doubt there is research being done now on how this happens.  We must design our courses with this learning in mind.