Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
I am at the Canadian Council on Learning conference on adult education in Fredericton. Though I had expected this would be much more management and administration focused than it was, I found it to be a refreshing blend of adult educators and academic working for change. This to me was a very welcome delevopment, as it represents a broad resistance against the idea of learning as commodity, something that can be sliced and diced and measured and sold by the seat-hour to the developing world (whee, I'm all activisty now).

I blogged the keynote address by Maude Barlow and four sessions today; there's a bit more to come tomorrow. The format of the four sessions (each devoted to a different aspect of adult education) was to have an academic present the research report, and then to have a practitioner comment on it. This worked, in my view, really well, keeping the academics honest and the practitioners involved. Anyhow, here's the blogging:

- Maude Barlow
- E-Learning
- Learning Communities
- Social Movement Learning
- Culture

I hope you enjoy these reports as much as I enjoyed writing them. This really was a fine day, really good for my spirits. In our world of electronic learning we are sometimes isolated between the corporatists and the technologists. But it's nice to see a firm representation of (shall we say) the humanists out there.

Today: 4 Total: 5 [Direct link]

Image from the website


Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024 04:44 a.m.

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