Category: learning

Learning: more than conversation

Mind Map from Informal Learning SessionToday I took part in a small portion of a larger online/F2F event originating in Germany from LearnTec.

It was fun to trade ideas with Heike Philips, Dave Cormier and Jay Cross (and I am sorry Jennifer Jones was unable to chime in due to timing/home rhythms at the early time of day). We all were strong proponents of the value of conversation in learning (informal or otherwise) but I found myself backing off a bit and reminding myself that conversation is one of the three legs of my learning stool. 

  • Conversation – making meaning, getting different perspectives, trying out and testing ideas, challenging assumptions.
  • Individual reflection – (because group reflection is a subset of conversation, no?) Stepping back, reviewing, observing, evaluating our own learning both in terms of process and content. Reflection provides us needed self awareness and the ideas we bring back into conversation.
  • Reification – borrowing from Communities of Practice theory, what we create that expresses what we are learning or have learned. With internet tools makeing self publishing so easy, this area has blossomed – videos, images, blogs — things that manifest both our conversations and our reflections and put them out for wider consideration.
These three are a vortex, always intersecting with each other, even competing for our attention, eh? I wish I had paid more attention to reflection when I was younger. 😉
I have a habit of worshippping at the altar of conversation. But like all things, I must not let that blind me to other elements. It is in the interplay, the fluctuation between things, the margins, the tensions of what we know and don’t know, that learning happens. 

Interested in Informal Learning? Join us at LearnTec 2009

Tomorrow I’ll be the guest of Heike Philip (in Germany) along with Jay Cross and Ken Thompson for an online roundtable on virtual learning, informal learning and virtual teams. We’ll mix it up, I’m sure. It is part of a larger day of activities that are F2F and online in GERMAN in the morning, German time, and in English in the afternoon, German time (early morning for us on the US West coast). Join us!

 

DateFebruary 4, 2009
Time1:30pm – 6pm Middle European Time
Duration4,5 h
BusyPeople
World Timewww_timeanddate_com
PlaceElluminate
TagsLearnTec 2009 , Simulcast, European Telecoaches Institute
Max. no of participantsNo limit live online, entrance fee at the LearnTec conference 49 €
ProgramProgram in pdf-format in ENGLISH, GERMAN, SPANISH
Registrationhttp://www.lancelotschool.com/index.php/services/events/registration
RecordingThis event will be recorded

Meeting Point @ LearnTec 2009
4:30pm  Virtual Collaboration Moderation Heike Philp
Introduction with Lutz Berger, free journalist 2.0, Science&Faction
Virtual Round Table – Panel Discussion

4:30pm  (GMT +!)   Virtual Collaboration Moderation Heike Philp
Introduction with Lutz Berger, free journalist 2.0, Science&Faction
Virtual Round Table – Panel Discussion
Jay Cross, author of the book ‘Informal Learning’, Nancy White, consultant for communities of practise and Ken Thompson, virtual team expert and author of the ‘Bioteaming Manifesto’, meet live online to discuss strengths and opportunities as well as weaknesses and threats for virtual teams.
This is an unusual and an explosive mixture of experts and trendsetters who have been doing the ground work of connecting people. We are looking forward to hearing their views on the ‘next 5000 days’ of the Internet, an Internet that appa rently took 5000 days to reach the same amount of connections than our brain has todate. Heike Philp will be moderating the discussion and invites all present, namely all ‘virtual’ and all ‘local’ participants to testdrive virtual collaboration and to freely share ideas.

E-Stuffed

Just a quick surfacing… this morning I had the good fortune to snag some of Derek Wenmouth and Margaret McLeod’s time. They were in town for a conference on the School of the Future. I asked if I could take them out a bit for breakfast and to see a bit of Seattle outside of the downtown core. This shot is looking east from the Hiram Chittenden locks, in the Ballard neighborhood. It was great to get outdoors and enjoy a rare sunny winter Seattle day.

As we chowed down on some delicious breakfast, we talked about this idea of “blended learning” and what it means to discern what medium and what approach at what point in time. How do our choices reflect the developmental and content needs of the learners? For children, how does it balance freedom and safety? How do you keep an eye on the polarity between individually driven learning and the experience of learning with others — which has more to do than just learning about something. It is about learning together and social interaction. It is a complex and interesting stew. My head was stuffed full of ideas.

This dovetails in with something that came up last week at the United Nations University meeting on e-Learning that I facilitated in Bonn – the idea that the “e-learning” is not just about classrooms and courses, but about “e-stuff” –> how tools and processes can enable us to weave in and make visible learning an any turn, in many places, formal and informal. Virginie Aimard and I want to write up this “E-Stuff Manifesto” — in our spare time. (I hope you appreciate the humor here.)

I don’t have time or mental bandwidth to capture it all now, but this is a little bookmarker for those interested in this more systemic approach. What do you think?

Don’t Vote for Me – Edublogger Awards (but vote!)

Edublogger Lifetime nomineeI’m sure you don’t really care about why I have not blogged (travel, work, need a new roof and have to get quotes and references, blah blah blah). I have about 4 posts I really want to write – and odd for me, write well and thoughtfully. I’m feeling quite inadequate. Then I see this… Lifetime achievement award 2008 The Edublog Awards. Oh my. Look who is on the list:

OK, folks, all those other folks are amazing. They really ARE focused on education, while I meander all over the place. Yes, learning is a passion. But vote for one of them. They are really amazing, generous people who have taught me a ton.

To whomever nominated you, bless your sweet heart. I am deeply appreciative and there is a big smile on my face. Being in this group of people is the best reward. But don’t vote for me — vote for one of the other fabulous people on the list.

I also have to giggle. LIFETIME! A lifetime in blogging years, eh? I think I started in 2004, but my short term memory and my lack of affinity for numbers may prove me wrong. 😉 And if you have a magic wand, do you have a way to build a free week into my life this month?

Guesting with Connectivism & Connective Knowledge

ConnectToday I am a guest conversationalist (??) in the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge course run by Stephen Downes and George Siemens. This is the course I was hoping to participate in, but the flurry of travel killed that idea. We had the first session this morning, and we’ll have another later today. The details:

You won’t want to miss the online sessions this week. Nancy White is our scheduled guest. We have two Elluminate discussions (both sessions can be accessed via this link): 11 am CST (see time zone conversions) and 7 pm CST (see time zone conversions).

Christy Tucker took some great notes, and the recording will be up later. Thanks, Christy. I agree that the brainstorming at the end was really good. I am kicking myself for not saving a set of the annotated slides, which included the brainstorm. Stephen, are they available? In the meantime, here are the unannotated slides plus the chat. (Connectivism Chat #1) As I mentioned at the end of the hour, there were TONS of rich, un-mined veins in the chat.

The chairs Christy talks about are on the first slide. After everyone was in, they all had names under them, pictures of coffee and food and all sorts of comments. It was a very convivial group!

Cck08 Individual, Community and Network

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cck08 networks)

Photo: Creative commons on Flickr by the infatuated

Edited Nov 6: A few more links related to this post