Further notes on Microlearning 2005

More notes on Microlearning 2005, Innsbruck, culled from my files and a few minutes to type:

During the second day, discussion swirled around Roger's KAYWA presentation.  Roger began by suggesting that microlearning, microcontent, social software could prove as great a challenge to traditional educational structures as blogging has done to mainstream media. 
     One aspect to this is learner control over the experience of content, like the American copyright principle of timeshifting - I can carry a lecture text on my handheld, listen to it on an iPod, play it through a Tiddlywiki on a USB drive.  And that user control is increasingly productive, rather than consumptive - I experience lecture notes through a wiki, which I annotate and otherwise write to.
      Another aspect is local differences in the emerging device ecology.  For example, in order to read a print newspaper a Japanese woman might snap a picture of a print copy at a kiosk, then read from her cell phone.  A German might port the image to his PC.  Another ecological niche might copy from PC to Palm Pilot.  Again, microcontent alters experience through multiple devices - spaceshifting.
      (Daniel Pinkwater readers might be reminded of his idea for trips: "time, space, and the other travel".

The third day concluded with a splendid jeremiad by Eric Neuhold.  He accurately summarized the history of new media promises to aid pedagogy.
       In our panel's passionate response, my colleagues correctly noted a persistently understated aspect of computer-mediated teaching and learning: the importance of social practices based on what technology enables, rather than more narrowly construed technological determinism.  Not devices alone, but what people do with them.
        I was struck by the problem of focusing on classroom uses of technology.  Such discourse often sidesteps the enormous amount of formal learning time spent outside of physical promixity to an instructor - reading assignments, self-directed lab work, fieldwork, writing assignments, automous study groups, academic fraternities, and so on.  So many other spaces are evoked by learning outside the classroom: dorms, libraries, quads, homes - all of which are mobilized by wireless, mobile learning.  Content provision is part of this, of course, but so is constructivist learning, heightened by social software.

   

Comments

[Gardner Campbell]

Brilliant blog. Thanks. I'm fascinated by these ideas and wonder if they will point toward a post-constructivist account of learning. I think they could, and should, but like the woman in "Help," I can say no more....

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