It is always nice at conferences when someone comes up and says "i read your blog every day" or "I really enjoy your blog". OK - they are probably after a free pint but it is worth it.
A month ago I was in Salzburg for a conference on Open Educational Resources and Social software. It was beautiful day and I was sitting outside on the terrace loooking around for potential victims for the podcasts. I had seen that Niall Sclater, Director of the Open University VLE programme was on the speakers list and thought of going to look for him. Then he came up and introduced himself. "I've been looking for you"' he said, "I've been reading your blog and I totally disagree with what you write about Personal Learning Environments." So we went on to have a good chat and then I did pursuade him to be interviewed. But Niall is persistent - he wouldn't talk about what I wanted to and continued on about why he thinks I am wrong. So, this is not so much me interviewing Niall but Niall interviewing me! Great fun.
Overview for Keywords: emerging sounds, PLE, PLEs, podcast, podcasting
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Comments
Great conversation!
I am also in favour of free tools, free access to them and the information they contain, and I too support the idea of responsible learning.
Since ever it can be remembered, one of the main struggles of humanity has been to gain free access to information. And now that we are much nearer to it than we have ever been before (?), we want to keep information “incarcerated” in virtual walled gardens. Is that fair? Are we doing what we preach?
I have a hard time understanding why some educational institutions have a problem with letting the information go in the open. Shouldn’t they be the ones setting the example?
I too think that learning becomes more effective when it is active. In our daily life we are always learning and engaging with other people in order to fulfil our learning needs. We don’t necessarily regard this as belonging to learning communities, but the fact is that everyone does to some extent. We all connect to other individuals, and get and provide information (=learn) through different means, both for our professional and private lives. In informal learning it “is allowed” to make it public. Individuals take responsibility for it, whereas in more formal settings, sometimes, the information becomes confidential and controlled. Learning becomes almost a secret…
I think the free access to e-tools can provide a greater sense of responsibility and make the learning activity be more contextualized and closer to its end users’ realities!