Readers Response

      I have recently read the first chapter in our PERSONAL LEARNING NETORKS book and the chapter brought up the fact that it would be better for education if schools changed to personal learning networks which are "rich sets of connections each of us can make to people in both our online and offline worlds who can help us with our learning pursuits". In other words the author is suggesting that schools change to online networking to access an infanant amount of knowledge from the online networks. My view on these ideas are mixed. Sure the idea of students having unlimited access to the networks sounds like great idea, but the book does not state the downfalls of this idea.
     The first problem that popped into my head was; how will schools afford to make these changes? Some schools now are struggling with funds and trying to keep their head above water to keep the education pool going. And if the schools decide to change to this kind of system it will more than likely be expensive and with that kind of expense to change the system, it might cost families extra money just to have their child go to school. The second problem that came to me is that i believe that if we were to change to this kind of system, the schools will be to dependant on networks and technology. Back when i was in high school, sometimes when i had computer classes, the computers in the computer labs would not work or the schools network would be down for sometime. So what if we do switch to this system then something happens such as a power outage or the networks are down for the day; then there would be a sugnificant amount of time wasted in that school day. I believe that schools need to stay the same but the idea of online networking is a good idea in some cases.
     If we were to mildly change our system to the point where we use networking/computers for a portion of the day while still maintaining the way we teach now, then i believe that system would work fine. I just dont believe that we should completely rely on networking to educate our youth in this country. Schools need to go with the flow with technology like today, smartbaords are filling classrooms around our country because its the new way of teaching.
    In concusion I do think that Personal Learning Networks does sound like a good idea but it is not worth toying or changing the system we have now. I believe that using networking should be limited in schools and should not be used as a whole learning system because of the expenses and risks of changing the system.