Knowing Knowledge

After reading through George Siemen's "Knowing Knowledge", I have to say it was a hard read for me. Firstly, I am not an educator by trade, and honestly, I am still trying to understand what  connectivism really is, and after reading this, I believe I have a much better grip on it. Rather than evaluate or summarize Siemen's work, I'd like to share a few things from it that caught my attention:

"Our pre-conceived structures of interpreting knowledge sometimes interfere with new knowledge."

Many times, we fail to receive the message because we can't get out of our own way. We've already processed the data,  passed judgement, and moved on failing to really learn anything new. 

"The fault of many schools, universities, and companies is the unwillingness to listen to the voices of those closest to change pressures and emerging methods."

So, we have people connected to what is needed for positive change and the methods to make it so. Yet much of the time our organizations fail to recognize either by choice or lack of vision, to create an environment where quality learning is possible. Although this ideology is not limited to education, let me focus on it a moment in order to answer Sue, our facilitator's question "Do you believe the educational system is broken." While I do not think the system itself is neccesarily broken, I do believe that perhaps the "brick and mortar" way of doing things is outdated and becoming less and less effective as a means of creating the environment needed to facilitate meaningful learning. Without these types of environments, are students really participating in the learning process or are they merely fulfilling the requirements of the system only to be ill-prepared for what comes after.