A Learner is Like an Evaluator

People all learn for different purposes. Some of the learners are learning for more personal storage of knowledge; some may learn for a better future job; people may also  learn just for self-entertainment. While it is important for people to evaluate what they are learning for, it is also crucial for learners to choose how to learn and which types of learning tools to assist their learning. In order to become a good learner, people all need to be good evaluator to making the right decision while they are keep learning.

Since the 21 century is an informative century, the creative technological tools enable information changing become more and more quickly. In Siemens's article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, the author writes that "The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD)."  While people in the past can keep a job as a life long career, people in the new century have to keep learning to keep pace with the development of the new technique and skills they need to fulfill their work. However, the large amount of new information and technology urge the learner to be a evaluator. While people need to keep breast to the new knowledge, they also need to recognize which is the important and unimportant information for them. According to Siemens"The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical." Although the decision you make today is the right, it may be meaningless tomorrow. Therefore, all learner need to be their own evaluator to set their own learning purposes and to choose the most efficient tools and information for their self-development.

Based on the video What is Connectivism, connectivism comes from" our needs to socialize and negotiate around knowledge." The different types of medias can be used for different purposes. Each learner needs to evaluate the various types of media tools to promote their own learning process. It is impossible to adopt all the technological tools into the learners' learning process, the right choice of media tools can make learning more efficient. Even if people are surrounded by Facebook, Twitter or Blogging, they need to make their self-evaluation to find the most useful mediation tool to socialize and negotiate around knowledge. 

To conclude,  all though the analogy that a learner is like a evaluator may not be the perfect one, it is obvious that learner need to keep evaluating the changing information and technology to keep pace with their acquisition.