Learning = Sharing our national complexity to make understanding easier or just have a laugh

I travel, like many of you. I travel and on many occasions, I get the question: where is your country of origin. When people hear 'Belgium' chocolates and beer come to mind (really good stuff), but also ... well... less wonderful stuff (no government for months, language discussions...).
For although Belgium is tiny, its administration is BIG! For only 10 million people, yes, Belgium is that small.
So now, a simple movie of 4 minutes explains Belgium and how ... it is at the top of bureaucratic nations (you don't belief it, until you see it)! Feel free to have a look and most of all, if you have a movie explaining your country in just a couple of minutes, share it, I love to learn more about nations and their peculiarities.

Please, make eLearning simple! The eLearningQueen does it…in a Survival Book

Sometimes you just want to read a fun book about your profession. Fun, exciting, a good overview is all I need at times. So what a great find I had, because the eLearningQueen (= who is a Dog, who has an human assistant: Susan Smith Nash) manages to do just that! Read this book (this is the link to the free version, which will only be here for a limited amount of time!), it gives a nice, light and fun overview on eLearning.

Even the (sub)title is fun: “Elearner survival guide: Everything you need to succeed in the wild and wooly world of mobile learning and e–learning, and hybrid college, K–12 and career courses.”

Susan writes with wit and clarity, her blog is captivating and … I am jealous (in a good way) of her writing and learning skills. So, I will take what she wrote and how she wrote it with me, to contemplate on what I will do in the next couple of months.

What does Susan tackle in the 295 pages of her guide? She tackles all the topics in fluent and short paragraphs, and linking it harmoniously to relevant research.

• She begins with what eLearning is, and covers some of the known terms (e.g. push<=> pull);
• There are also hints on what study skills we will all need to succeed in eLearning (self regulation, checklists, practical steps, collage credits, free online software training,…and twelve very useful sanity-saving tips)
• Chapters 3 and 4 cover writing skills, dividing it into technical writing and research writing tips.
• Mobile learning and Web2.0 are covered in short, but very understandable paragraphs. In this section Susan also looks at practical adaptation in a k12 (teenage students) setting.
• Getting personal with looking at profiles of eLearners and careers.
• Now, and this part I truly LOVED immensely (because it linked me to some persons from my past, which… I did not take into account in the last couple of years). Susan managed to clarify to me that personal hero’s of whatever discipline can be linked to eLearning: picking up examples from the wonderful poet Maya Angelou , and the great political activist and anarchist Emma Goldman – need to read ‘Living my Life’ again, a.o.
• The last chapter focuses on institutional challenges and eLearning, or what they mean to the eLearner, which is also very relevant if you are linked to an educational institution.

So, I am very grateful to Susan for this unexpected book treat, I will ponder on what she wrote, and how she wrote it for my seclusion week is coming up. This means I go home, buy everything to last me a week (at least), cut off my internet connection, log-off my phone, leave the door bell ringing, push all humans out of the house… and do whatever I want, when I wanted, completely disconnected… for one week. Time to meditate about where I am going, and looking whether my passion is indeed still fulfilled with the work I am doing, at the place I am doing it. I have radically changed my life a couple of times trying to synchronize my professional life with learning passions and up until now it has worked. Professional satisfaction is crucial for me, for it takes up most of my waking hours. But fine-tuning is still needed, so meditating is a good path and eye opener.

Living a mobile life? How do you cope?

First I was a nomad, I did not have a house nor passport for two years, moving from one place to another. Then I was house hopping for another three years. Eventually I got myself a house, then I started to learn on top of my work... so all along I had to be mobile. Where the mobility was mostly physical in the first part of my adult life, it quickly became essential for my mental development in the second part of my adult life.

As ubiquitous learning is becoming more obvious, some of you have been writing on the fact that learning has always been mobile, like Michelle Pacansky-Brock linking it to university issues. With this post I would love to hear your mobile life and how you are coping?

For my work I sometimes need to visit partners in the South (India, Morocco, South-Africa...). While I am there, I learn from my colleagues over there, I learn how they tackle certain pedagogical problems and infrastructural challenges. So I guess, at that point I am learning while being mobile, something that explorers have always done. In fact starting from the 17th century mobile learning was all the rave if you were part of the upper class, you went on a Grand Tour to get extra education. And in Africa they had and have people - les griots - who took what they had seen and learned on their travels and routes, the history of the people passed on to them for generations, and delivered that knowledge to whomever wanted to listen to them. So mobile learning is not new, but learning through means of mobile devices is.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was on route and this is how I was learning while being on route or mobile. I am currently following a master in distance education at Athabasca University on top of my work as an eLearning coordinator and researcher at the Institute of Tropical Medicine. This brings along some challenges, because where ever I go for my job, I need to stay in touch with my learning material as well. On this journey I had: two smartphones (one symbian, one windows mobile and waiting to by an android one), one light weight laptop with me. The trip consisted of a bus ride, four trains (yes, cutting the carbon emission by not taking the plain) which totaled 8 hours of travelling and a cab drive to my hotel.

All in all, here are some mobile learning snapshots... pictures taken with mobile smartphones:

Waiting for the train, so learning on the platform

Shaky while writing the first draft of a paper on the train




Learning next to the queen while waiting on the next train



What is your mobile life like?