Connectivism Reflection

I really like the idea of focusing on the where and when we need to access information rather than just knowing information for the sake it. I like trivia and knowledge for the sake of knowing it. However, as technology changes, taking education with it, it is important for me to keep in mind that my students may not know what is "needed" during a lesson. I'm not as concerned with that as I was before. So long as they know where to get the information and when it's necessary to do so, they will be successful. To facilitate learning for my students my emphasis will shift from "ask a friend" to "ask a stranger" to find the answer. That is to say, we have the opportunity to acquire and glean information from a global database now. It is great to collaborate with friends, we can learn from this process. It might be double-great to collaborate with a stranger, with different views & sociocultural background. By expanding our personal learning network, we indeed increase our capacity to learn. In Siemens article, "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age" he states that the informational pipeline itself is more important than the contents inside. I can identify with this statement. Having pipelines connected to a few static sources sure seems less productive than having pipelines that connect to many dynamic sources that span time & distance. Especially when we talk about information becoming outdated at a quite alarming rate, we must have new sources of information at the ready.