I was quite excited to hear Howard Rheingold. He took the stage wearing
a colourful shirt (colours being his visual trademark and passion).
Live blognotes from the keynote given by Howard Rheingold
Before technology => pedagogy. Without the best pedagogy, the
technologies would not be so interesting.
Concepts of importance according to Howard (and agreeing)
Learner-centred: multiple learning is now possible, if you have access
to media, and you know what you are doing as a learner.
Inquiry based learning is of interest, knowing how to ask the questions
in a world where so many things change so rapidly.
Collaborative learning: more learners collaborate on projects, as well
as cooperative learning. Being responsible for each other’s learning. Being
aware of what other’s interest and expertise is. So that the group of learners
can be bigger than the sum of the individual learners.
Networked learning: learners can connect to each other across
locations, regions, groups…
Howard’s passion was/is based on virtual communities. He started virtual communities decades ago, and
got more experience on this topic based on trial and error, use and experience,
explicitly enabling the learner group to have a voice.
The idea is to create a conversation that is bigger due to
collaboration/corporation/co-working.
It started as learners amplifying their individual voice by using
blogs, commenting on discussion forum… the sense of agency, the ability to
create your own networks is enabled by the web, and social media in particular.
Co-teaching: the learners teach everyone, including the teacher. Where
the first meeting is face-to-face, the dialogue is kept going online.
The real change in mindset happened when he introduced the concept of
co-learning. So the shift really went from the teacher lecturing, to the
learners teaching themselves. It is increasingly collaborative.
What do self-learners need to know in order to effectively teach and
learn from each other? (he does make explicit that only a few kept the conversation
going) => peeragogy (free handbook, open to suggestions from all of us). Peeragogy.org
There is a place for teachers, but we cannot scale up the training of
teachers. And do people want to pay more taxes to pay teachers =>
social-political issues.
More people than ever before have access to learning (remark from me:
yes, but… it is not because you learn, you are able to see what type of
learning will help you forward in life, or will increase critical thinking.
Wisdom does have a tendency to come with age).
The web is not just corporate platforms to interact. It would not be
there unless students, individuals construct information (remark from myself:
yes, but are these self-made content pages taken up by search engines?)
Media should be mixed based on its usefulness.
Procedural knowledge is increasingly freely available, but
understanding how all of these fit together in order to attain more knowledge
needs to be researched. As such an expert facilitator helps, but more and more
people connect together.
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