A Learner is Like...

A learner is like a vacuum.  Always taking in new information at a blistering pace can make your head spin, but the way we live now has shaped the way we pick up new things.  Ample information and knowledge also comes with a sizable amount of garbage.  The only problem with all of the knowledge around us is how do we know what's important, and better yet, what is going to be important tomorrow, or the next day?  A learner has a filter that may need to be emptied of all of the excess crap once in a while, but in addition to the new version of humans' affinity for everything noteworthy, this filter is capable of weeding out what's important, to themselves at least.  With a HEPA-like filter on board, humans are becoming proficient at finding the big news, and remembering it.  But where does our brain go, naturally, for all of this knowledge, you ask? George Siemens says in The Impact of Social Software on Learning: "It really boils down to our ability to have a dialogue."  This relates to the vacuum model because our social interaction, (the basis of Socio-cultural learning theory), is the shag carpet that our cranial Kirby scours every waking moment. 

When social networking first started to get big, people could learn from their friends even when their friends weren't literally teaching.  A person could all of a sudden share things with anyone they associate with, all the time! Someone you once knew could now make a comment on line, and very out in the open, which you might read immediately, or even days or weeks later, that could change the way you think, act, or even do your job.  Karen Stephenson says in Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age by George Siemens: "Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge."  By this she says expertly that everyone we know has now become everything we know.