You are Never Alone

One of the nice things about being back at work at this time of the year in Australia, before schools, Unis and TAFEs resume, is that I get to look a bit more closely at some of the information coming across my desk, read those incoming blogs a bit more assiduously, and even follow up some of the links.

Something that comes into my box every morning, as I’ve remarked before, is Stephen Downes’ OLDaily. I never cease to be amazed how, even when he is on the move, as he is now - on his way to a conference in Malaysia - Stephen includes a range of real gems. Stephen’s item today was about how Graham Attwell had used Slidecast to create a set of slides with narration. The gem for me was the actual content of Graham’s presentation.

Graham’s presentation is called Knowledge Maturing and Learning. You can find it at both Graham’s home site and at Slideshare. I ended up viewing it at Slideshare because there I could view it in full screen.

I think the reason the presentation resonated with me is that many of the points Graham makes about informal learning and the role played by communities of practice fits so well with what here at edna is our vision for edna Groups and me.edu.au.

A few pointers from the presentation to whet your appetite

• E-learning is often informal learning
• Research has found that the main e-learning tool being used is Google
• e-learning is largely driven by problem solving, motivated by personal interest, prompted by the need to know, and structured by the learner
• Lurking in communities of practice is critical to the way we learn - we eventually feel confident enough to contribute
• recognition of informal learning is a real issue
• we need to develop a culture of collaboration and sharing
• we have moved from an industrial model based on the idea of formal transmission of knowledge to one of networked learning that interacts with personal learning
• Personal Learning environments are critical and are enabled by social networking software that faciltates conversation and interaction.
• Institutional negative reactions to social networking will result in the schools/institutions being seen as even less relevant by the learner.

Graham’s slides were interesting too, so go look for yourselves