What I learned about learning in 2007

Tony Karrer does a round up to see who has learned what in 2007. A great way to rethink (time of the year) what has gone into my mind and has stuck there.

A couple of things I learned were on how to get people into the sociail aspect of elearning;
another thing I invested a lot of time in, was in making up all kinds of reminders for myself. A bit like guidelines, but that sounds so formal.

I got people interested in using the book 'beyond bullet points', which got a lot of scientists redesigning their presentations into real kick-ass ones (including mine, I cheekishly admit). This approach of using a script helped in redesigning courses as well, the courses stuck to the minds of learners because of their high narrative quality;

as a coordinator, I saw that if I could deliver research that was immediately answering some of the question of sceptics, I got them doubting their questions a little bit (hey, any tiny bit helps :-) The one that had good impact was the 'nosignificantdifference.org'. Another idea that got sceptics moving in their chairs was: 'giving students the possibility to teach a part of the content, will increase their knowledge. When do scientists or teachers do their best work? When they have to put their thoughts into papers and articles.';

my attention shifted to the mobile learning area. I learned a lot on this topic by simply jumping in at the deep end. Starting projects, reading up on it, discussing with people and their expertise (thank you John Traxler!)... This resulted in a presentation on mobile projects that I worked on, this was well received. The discussion during and after this presentation got a lot of ideas going and knowledge exchanged.

I learned a lot by jumping into social media: twitter, etcetera, but most by attending online seminars and groups: CLTI, SCOPe and internettime group to name three strong ones.

books (old school ones) helped me as well in building a framework that helps me deliver my message. 'Informal learning' by Jay Cross and 'the seven day weekend' by Ricardo Semler. Both of which are great visionairs for open learning approaches.

Apart from this I learned A LOT by reflecting, both on my blog and in my bed, bath, on the highway, in elevators... discussing and thinking helps in any learning process. The network certainly helps a lot also! Thanks to all of you!!

The most important one: I learned a lot by taking time off. Each week I put time aside for myself. I do not do anything in it and I do not allow anyone to be in that time. This really opened up my mind. It gave me the possibility to refresh everything I learned or read the past days, months, years.

The new thing I am looking at is 'social media for developing regions'. I get some good vibes from the fact that this will enable secluded areas to get their knowledge and experiences out into to the global world (and have an impact on the total knowledge that is out there). But I am still working on that one to get a better idea.