Interactive and Connected Learning: Why Connected Learning Matters

4. Why Connected Learning Matters

By fostering exploration and interaction with resources, connected learning can re-engage learners with certain key benefits of libraries, including access to various information and freedom to learn at their wisdom.

Connected learning takes place in learning networks, including schools, homes, libraries and community centers. Connected learning also supports the idea that learners achieve the best when learning is strengthened and maintained in a number of environments, enabling libraries to engage other institutions as partners in a connected learning environment.

Students need to have permanent access to new and emerging technologies and the internet to make online learning more powerful and successful. Libraries that provide access to new technologies and the Internet can better integrate into the connected learning environment. Those libraries who want to better support the connected learning environment will have to ensure that communities have access to these key components of the learning model.

Connected learning can also become a model for a faculty, specialists, or even the community, promoting the use of technology and communication in order to improve professional development or even the development of the community. Connected learning can also encourage teachers to include librarians, authors, administrators and parents, integrating many different peers into a related learning model.

Web Resource: http://www.ala.org/tools/future/trends/connectedlearning