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Well, well well...
I have to say that I really had a hard time to decide that which post I should write comment on, since I really spent a lot of time on reading posts which links with each other and lead me to an infinite reading work. Of course, I did benefit a lot from them, not only my reading rate in English on screen, but also my laptop, in the sense that my IE had been added a lot add-ins/plug-ins on. After all, I have to make a choice. How about this one: http://marianthacher.blogspot.com/.
This is an blog for adult education and technology. The reason why I share this is that we learn a lot on how to educate children but not adult in this program, but they do have differences in every aspect which make it necessary for teachers to know specifically those differences and what should teachers respond in order to bring about a satisfactory learning outcome in both parts.
I learned about TIMAC from one post in this blog. Here is some words from the homepage of TIMAC "Two years ago, I didn't see myself as a "mentor" and certainly not as a "techie." I have to admit that I have seen myself grow personally and professionally from this TIMAC experience. I've never thought of myself as a leader or "mentor," but in the last couple of years I've watched people follow my lead. I've had many teachers come to me with questions; some work-related, some not.
"I've accepted that I may not know all of the answers all of the time for all of the people, but sometimes I know just enough to help someone. I've become more confident in my use and knowledge of educational technology. I'm realistic about what I can do, and what my limitations are. I'm very happy with my growth and success and it encourages me to continue learning, teaching, and mentoring."
These two paragraphs enlightened me that I feel better about the teaching job. I'd like to share it with you.
Moreover, I dug a little further for more information and found the SCANS competences are really interesting and essential for adult learners as well as newly graduates from school await to get satisfactory job. For anyone who may interests in this, please refer to this site: http://wdr.doleta.gov/SCANS/

Image of My Analogy

Finally, I'm done with this image. Hope this will work.

Cube: Learner

Line: Learning

Point: Knowledge

The intra-person complexity is represented by a cube that has eight facets, which is only a numeric symbol of multidimensional human characteristic. The inter-person knowledge building is showed as lines between cubes. In this model, the learner in the center builds up knowledge relations with every other learners, which indicates that s/he benefits the most from this certain complexity community.

URL

http://school20.ning.com/

While I was reading Siemens' Article, a question kept on knocking my head: if learning, in the sense of connectivism, can be fully self-motivated, self-organized, and self-assessed with proper usage of websites and other computer based assistance, then, what is the role of teacher in this process of learning? Teacher's teaching approaches and personalities, as well as students' school time all play roles in the forming of learners' characteristics and acquisition of knowledge and skills which in some way indicate the percentage of future success in their life. However, what I see is a trend where teacher and school, traditionally speaking, seem trivial to a person's future success. I read a parent who home-educated his children successfully responded to a post named "web 2.0 is the future of education" (http://www.techlearning.com/blog/2008/03/web_20_is_the_future_of_educat_1.php)saying "By that time, the interactive technology will be even more advanced than it is now. Perhaps everybody with an eye for learning efficiency will be studying remotely by cell phone to their own individual requirements and the school classroom will have become the new 'alternative education'. Who knows?"I hate the implication that the profession of teacher is starting to fade away before I enter into this career.

Fortunately, I found answers and suggestions to my questions on this networking group. The group interprets itself as "School 2.0 goes beyond the practical discussion of applying the read/write and collaborative Web technologies in the classroom. It is, instead, a larger discussions of how education, learning, and our physical school spaces can (or should) change because of the changing nature of our social and economic lives brought on by these technologies." Only if you find your identity, esteem, and interest in this area, can you do better in further discovery and dedicate yourself to the career you love.

Analogy

It's hard for me to find an analogy that fit with my understanding of George Siemens's Connectivism Theory. However, I do find a way to concrete the abstract relation between learning, knowledge, and learner.

Let's say knowledge is a dot. Dots dispersively exist in one space. The route from one dot to another, which is a straight line, forms the process of learning. Lines intersect and cross each other, with which locate on the same surface compose the knowledge system of a learner. In other words, a flat surface is a learner defined by his/her unique web of lines of knowledge(relationship). Each learner is one surface. Two unparalleled surface consist of a space. Several spaces construct our 3 dimensional universe.

This is only a thought. A simplified version of human learning complexity. As Siemens states:"Learning...is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.", my analogy mainly focus on the connection of knowledge and try to map a theory. It is not flawless, but has some points.

My ways of using Edu Blogs in EFL classroom

Teaching:

I always hope that I can teach adults working during weekdays and taking my class at night or at weekends. They have basic knowledge of English vocabulary and grammar; and learning skills. They also have a well-established cognitive schema about the politics, economics, and other cultural aspects in this world. They learn English so as to seek a better accomplish in their career and life. All in all, they may have more motivation and autonomy, but less energy and time to study and finish my assignment. Their different jobs also add other diversity elements in this classroom. These diversities are vital to the success of teaching and learning that they should not be overlooked but hard for teacher to take into consider every of them.

However, with the help of Internet, I can easily manage the class anywhere and anytime. So do those students. Instead of going to a certain place in a certain time, working students may enjoy the ease and privacy learning at home or at work. Compare to the real classroom, students have way more choice of resources. Though posting blogs requires ones' writing skills, students can also benefit from reading others' blogs and listening and watching real-life videos and funny flash. As to speaking, I also found several sites about exchange language around the world. Students can also talk to each other or as a whole class on line through skype.

There are more sources and information I want to present in my class blog in the future. As I said in my first post, this is my first time that relate blog with learning and teaching. And, of course, I like it! and I think, other students also enjoy the adventure in the cyber space. Those link rolls in each site are like chains connect one and the other. If you have time and your eyes won't complain, you will spend a whole day in front of your laptop study, without feeling bored.

Wooooooooooooo.................

Though this is definitely not my first time blogging, this is indeed my first time starting a blog related with learning, which has nothing to do with interest and autonomy, at least in my opinion. I just want to get homework done, really fast. However, since I started to work on this week's homework at 4pm this afternoon, I've already spent almost 6 hours on this! And what's amazing is that I hardly realize it's already 10pm until my eyes feel dry and my head feels dizzy. I'm totally into this!

I haven't decided how I can use all these sources in my own teaching and learning yet, since there are too much information. Usually, when I am going to a grocery store I always have a hard time to decide which brand and flavor to buy. But, one role of teacher in his/her class is decision-maker, isn't it? I hate to make a choice when I can't. So, I'm still deciding.....

Coming soon*^-^*