http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-09-07-graspr-phillips_N.htm

Keep up the writing….it’s great.

Just thought you might be interested. The link is below:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-09-07-graspr-phillips_N.htm

Please let me clarify, I did not mean this to be a criticism of you or your post in any way (nor Jason Kincaid for that matter). I really enjoyed reading it and wholeheartedly agree with your message.

To add to this, despite the fact people have been discussing these ideas for some time now the unfortunate reality is they have failed to seep through to many other areas of education (let alone outside education). This would seem to explain the persistent reliance on lectures and a focus on pushing information from one (the expert) to many (the students), rather than co-learners sharing and discussing the information amongst themselves and an emphasis on exploration and discovery. The traditional instructivist heirarchy of expert-student is as widespread as it ever was.

It is equally important therefor to discuss existing theories in a way that’s synthesised with personal experience as it is to present new ones – because to many these ideas are still undiscovered. So I think it’s crucial that those of us who believe in them continue to discuss their significance and application, because that’s how change happens.

Yours may very well be the post that an instructivist discovers which leads them to think differently. So the fact you took the time to discuss Social Learning is incredibly important and valuable and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. The fact it gained attention via Techmeme is even better.

I think the other thing I didn’t discuss in my post, which I should have, is the persistent trend in education that eLearning equals WebCT; that online education is only achieved through the management of learning via the LMS to the exclusion of all else. It’s so pervasive I think that people don’t think to explore alternatives, which might prove more engaging and more effective.

This highlights the importance of modeling best practice too really. There’s no substitute for a good example of implementation to show the sorts of vibrant and dynamic student ecosystems that can flourish in a Social Learning model and importantly the educational outcomes that can emerge.

Cheers,

Mike

Thanks for your pushback on this. I didn’t mean to imply that I was discovering something new…I was merely trying to explore what Seely Brown calls “Learning 2.0″.

I personally dislike the 2.0 moniker…I used it because Seely Brown had done so.

That said, I think you’re absolutely right about there being a lot of people who don’t yet think about learning in this way. I think the group is much bigger than venture capitalists…