Magic ePals!

                       

ePals is a place that focuses on creating social learning networks where people from different background can get together and talk about their ideas based on similar topics, educators, students, parents can all be grouped here to express their idea about education and learning.

When I first started it, I really like the Filters part where I can choose the subjects that I’m interested in, like Art, Business, Dance, etc., and then there are several related programs pop put for me to choose, so by clicking the names of those programs, I can explore and read some general information about them. Besides, I can always go back to add subjects that I’m interested.

On the first page of the website, there are many little squares of people who are also in the same field with their introduction there that I can connect with, it aims to let users to know each other and by making connection with each other, people can make groups to express their opinions about teaching, learning, methods and technology, and so on.        

                     

What I like the most, is the left column that has several choices for users to choose from in order to shrink the search range, those are country, language, class size, interest, subject and specialization, with choose information in the drop-down part, I can make a customized search for people in the similar field that I’d like to make connection with, this feature is very useful for me to looking for teachers that also interested in teaching Chinese outside of Asian countries to communicate with, and actually I already found some of them and made connections!. 

The Network is the Learning

              

              

                      

A learner today is like a luxury car in an extra limited edition. Cars with advanced auto function run faster, provide bigger and more comfortable space for people and also avoid accidents with those detective sensors, so with these advanced functions, this car could be a more popular car among the other ones; same like learners today, the ones with the ability of keep themselves to stay current in the field could always learn more, learn faster and learn more broadly, so they can always be on top of their field.

After reading Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, I really agree what Driscoll(2000) defines learning as “ a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] much come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world”. This actually reminds me of the experience I had when I was an interpreter. As an interpreter, what I do is not only translate one language to another, what’s more, it’s more like an exchange of information, and I need to keep myself updated daily by searching information and knowledge online or listen to news in order to do so. Thus, by doing my own researches online and interact with my advisor and colleagues I gained information for the work that was coming. And not only for my interpreting career, but also when I was learning Spanish. I started to learn Spanish two years ago, and I decided to learn it by myself instead of join a Spanish program since I couldn’t afford it. So what I did was downloaded an app on my phone, and joined a Spanish learning forum online. To my surprises, there are plenty of Spanish learning sources in that forum and most of them are easy to follow and easy-understanding steps for beginners, which by applying them and interacting with the users also sign for it, I learned a new language and got to know more things than just language itself.

What I learned the most from the above two experiences was not the skill or language themselves, instead, it’s always connect to the others, or even, to the outside world to keep myself updated. So like The Network is the Learning video states “The way we are connect to other individuals is largely responsible for our ability to continue to stay current in the field”.