Stephen Downes
Stephen's Web
Personal Learning
I don't know. I'm a bit out of my element, speaking to corporate e-learning industry types here in Boston. I have been thinking of all the events of the last year, of where I was when I spoke in Tennessee. It feels like it was yesterday. Learning for 'a better life' just doesn't seem to be on the radar screen. I can talk about webs and networks and personal learnings and PLEs but there's a disconnect unless people see themselves as learners rather than teachers. Unless they are seeking to empower themselves and build their own lives, rather than seeing themselves as helpless before the whims of those with power and control. Anyhow, here are the slides and here is the audio. There is some new stuff on PLEs, especially near the end. Stuff to think about and develop further. "Use these technologies to develop your own learning," I said at the panel, suggesting that they can't tell people to use new technologies, they can only model and demonstrate. Is this what the audience wants to hear? I don't know - but it's the only story I can tell. Same as it ever was. Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, April 12, 2007 4:38 p.m.. [Link] [Tags: Podcasting, Networks, Online Learning, Audio] [Previous][Next]Comments
Re: Personal Learning
I am at the conference as well. Several of the sessions have been excellent, but the underlying current you speak of (how do we complete the tasks dictated to us i.e. appease the man) runs through many.
One of my coworkers is a brilliant educator, and his career development advice to me early on was "do what you want to do." It has taken me a while to understand his point: put yourself in a job where you can be a lifelong learner.
Why do I mention this? The best article I've read in the last year was your Top Ten Ways to be Successful:
http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech/tech236.shtml
Many items on the list relate. Thanks for a great article.
Ben Frueh
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Re: Personal Learning
And you may say to yourself: Where does that highway go to?
You're right, learning is about power, and in that kind of audience perhaps they wanted to hear about "learning" approaches that would perpetuate their power. Your vision of Web 2.0 is perhaps simply anathema.
I may read you wrong, but one of the places you sounded most alive, most fulfilled in the last year was the trip to Bogotá.
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Re: Personal Learning
Stephen you may have predetermined the tone of your presentation by the insertion of Vonnegut as the first slide. His literary device of "so it goes" could be to explain the unexplained or to be resigned to what is predestined to be. In the case of PLE maybe change won't happen - or for it to happen full scale change needs to occur from learner to learning providers. You mention in one of your end slides that it isn't motivation - it's ownership that is the prime requirement. To take ownership is to accept personal responsibility. I don't think learners, learning providers are prepared or positioned to accept personal responsibility - either for how we learn or how learning situations are to be designed. So it goes. [Comment]
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Re: Personal Learning
Stephen you may have predetermined the tone of your presentation by the insertion of Vonnegut as the first slide. His literary device of "so it goes" could be to explain the unexplained or to be resigned to what is predestined to be. In the case of PLE maybe change won't happen - or for it to happen full scale change needs to occur from learner to learning providers. You mention in one of your end slides that it isn't motivation - it's ownership that is the prime requirement. To take ownership is to accept personal responsibility. I don't think learners, learning providers are prepared or positioned to accept personal responsibility - either for how we learn or how learning situations are to be designed. So it goes. [Comment]
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Re: Personal Learning
'corporate e-learning types'
'appease the man'
Have I been transported back to the 1960s?
Do we really believe that Higher Education has been a driver in e-learning? NO
Who on earth has been providing us with all the tools that users are using here? Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube etc. Corporates? YES
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Re: Personal Learning
Having been around enough to have seen some history (and still a bit surprised to be in such a position) I would suggest that most of the 'innovations' brought to us by Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube etc. originated in academic environments and were copied by the corporations in question. In some cases, the corporation itself had its genesis in an academic environment.
Which is fine, of course, until those toiling in the corporate arena - which is, and always has been, more about sales than anything - come to believe that *they* are the (sole?) source of innovation. And that it is *their* values and priorities that should be taken as guidance.
When I complain about 'corporate types' I am thinking not only of the skewed sense of priorities, but also the 'blast from the past' atmosphere I find myself in, as though the last five years hadn't happened.
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Re: Personal Learning
I would not say corporates are "providing us all the tools" at all. They are buying them -- del.icio.us, stumbleupon, slideshare, spurl, vyew, last.fm, 43things, digg, upcoming, LibraryThing, Thumbstack, frappr flickr, are not *originating* in the corpo-sphere (when they hit big is when they come in) -- the innovation driving all this is coming from individuals, small groups, being passionate about doing something cool, giving it away (and then hoping for the YouTube level offer). [Comment]
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Re: Personal Learning
Stephen, what you wrote re: people needing to see themselves as learners is the core of my own personal struggle with "training" and "teaching." Increasingly I believe that people can't afford to have this passive approach to learning, where they just wait for some corporation to tell them what they need to learn next. We've seen what happens to people when they trust companies, and the reality is that it's not good. It's my view that the real challenge here is helping individuals feel empowered to take control of their own learning. That's why I'm so drawn to this idea of personal learning--the knowledge is mine and I should be in charge of it, rather than living in the old industrial model of letting the organization continue to drive the means of production by telling me what I need to learn. There needs to be a connection, obviously, between the work I'm doing and the learning I need to perform that work. But the more it is in my control, the better.
Michele Martin
The Bamboo Project Blog [Comment]
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Re: Personal Learning
another test, this one is the last [Comment]
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