In addition, they may not have training or support for reflection. All of which points not to a need for or property of technology but rather the opposite - a need for face to face conversations. Conversations with real people about their concerns and experiences. Conversations where you put aside the computer, the twitter, the blog, the facebook and the mobile phone and sit with someone for a while and just talk to them. I'd even dare to suggest that for most on-campus students and particularly the ones who live in digital connectedness the need is not to move everything into that environment. That does no service at all. Rather it needs support to come away from all that noise and have a conversation.

Now what do we mean by reflection and how is it done? How should students be reflecting and what support or training is there for the processes? I think this is important in the context of discussions about learning. I also think its important to think about what you mean by learning. For example is it the learning of facts, processes, acculturation or what? Again this may have implications for reflective processes and definitions etc.

The main point is that we must not assume that because a technology is exciting or that students are encultured into it that all learning activity should be located within that environment. They have enough of that every day. They don't have many learning conversations. Now that WOULD be new!

Interesting also that when I started typing conversation, discussion and dialogue the tag generator had only dialogue mapping to offer. Interesting!

 I love technology and it impacts on all our lives but it doesn't mean that we should throw the past away and just live in ignorance of all that has gone before. And surely as anyone interested in technology knows, a technology in favour today may be over-taken by another at any time.

I changed my kids school recently and still see kids from their old school. Its a remarkable difference when you see representatives of the 2 cohorts together. The old school has many kids who can't pay attention for very long, who jump around from one thing to another all the time and who struggle to sit and just talk to each other. The new school rations the use of computers but makes use of them selectively all over the curriculum. The new school focuses on cooperative learning instead. They're far better at working with others on or offline and if they ever use Twitter it won't  be instead of studying history or any other subject.  

Are we really critical enough of technology or does enthusiasm get the better of us?

At the moment reflection and frameworks exist apart from each other. Our innovation combines them to give more focus. I'd be interested to hear if this idea might be a death knell for e-portfolios? At ElearningConsultancy.com we think it is. 

Tellefoni are offering a sensible route to mlearning. People just record their voice through the phone. Others can get automatic SMS messages as soon as the voice message is recorded. All such messages can be posted to a private or shared web site for further activity. One to one, many to many, one to many - all by voice. They call it grandma friendly 'cos anyone can make a phone call. Now *thats* what I call mlearning.

Cheers,

Nick

The problem then seems to be holding a focus in the centre (something that perhaps this software doesn't seem designed to do anyway). Without such a focal point it risks feeling too detached from everyone else. Online events may provide some social glue and a common experience but otherwise I would imagine using this as a glorified web page or myspace portfolio tool might be best. Perhaps a living portfolio kind of tool is a useful application for this kind of facility. In this day and age I would also want to see other facilities in here. Things such as video and picture blogging from mobile phones etc would be nice and are available on sites such as Ning.

The major VLEs can all offer personal pages and feeds and blogs etc (several already do) and that leaves you wondering why the need for social networking software aside from learning and teaching across course and institutional boundaries. That would be an example of where it might be most useful for students and staff to network with all and sundry online and they can patch it into work in other online contexts - courses, projects etc. In that sense I think this kind of facility may be obviously very useful - as a bridge.

It would allow people to work across groups and to obtain input from a variety of other sources through dialogue or resources available elsewhere -networking. This positions it alongside alternatives such as myspace, facebook etc etc. These places are already being regarded as slightly old fashioned by many who look instead at networking via youtube and more recently SeeMeTV where user-generated content can be part of revenue-sharing. 

So, to be reductive, its an interactive web page! You can mix your own stuff with content from elsewhere and discuss it all in the same place. Nothing wrong with that.

cheers,

Nick

eChina Project Team Lancaster University,

email: n.bowskill@lancaster.ac.uk

web: http://protopage.com/nickbowskill 

cheers,

Nick Bowskill

eChina Project Team Lancaster University

email: n.bowskill@lancaster.ac.uk

web: http://protopage.com/nickbowskill

These last 18 months I've been working in an elearning project consortium of Chinese and UK universities and when we were out there last I showed it to one of the Chinese partners. They were fascinated with it and we've been playing around with some of these things to explore ideas. See what you think if you haven't already tried shareable co-editable start pages.

cheers,

Nick Bowskill

Lancaster University eChina Project Team

and Freelance e-learning worker 

Email: n.bowskill@lancaster.ac.uk

http://protopage.com/nickbowskill

Whether this is a collective purpose or an individual purpose either is fine. If however people just try the technology (a fine activity as that is) then it soon goes stale. It becomes another form of web site if we all just put our posters up and wait on each other or another discussion list we all track with only the odd message being posted. Who should provide the purpose or the focus? What might a focus look like?

I believe, like many people, that informal learning is facilitated by such community technologies but I also believe that it needs people to be pro-active in approaching each other or it needs a contral focus - even if that focus is intermittent. Online communities around the world have online events - guest speakers, theme of the month, webcasts or whatever. Might these be the missing glue for a community?

The other issue is what might come out of being connected this way? What are the boundaries of collaboration in such communiteis and social networking sites? Certainly I don't believe that a virtual learning environment is a piece of software nor too can the same be said of a personalised learning environment. Your learning environment is how you perceive it and it combines different people, purposes, contexts, online spaces and offline activities. Sometimes it's within an insitution and other times it goes far beyond.

I have been a member of a very small informal learning community for some time and after a while I became more confident and more active until eventually I proposed a collaborative learning project. I invited anyone interested to join me. I had several takers and together we tried out a VLE and collaboratively designed an online course. Then we decided to publish a paper to witness and reflect upon our informal collaboration. Then we met and delivered a paper at a conference and finally published a chapter in a book. That's quite a lot from infornal collaboration with people in the UK, USA and Japan to mention but a few. 

Based on that experience, i proposed that we develop a support initiative in the online community for anyone else to bring a project to the community. In the first phase we generated around 7 projects which brought together people from all over the world. Some people were in academic contexts and others in commercial settings. After a gap and a change of web sites etc, we recently had a second phase which has had a couple of projects but perhaps not so succesful (http://nicholas.bowskill.googlepages.com/). Maybe it had become exhausted in a relatively small community. Nonetheless, we brought together people from Mongolia and people from across the Middle East - people we might never have worked with in our ordinary working lives.

So what next? I proposed another project! This time we moved away from a list-based environment into a social networking environment in order to explore this kind of technology. We're still a small number and it may not be enough to sustain development. However, in there we are trialling mobile blogging (photo and video) among other things. It's very early days but my point is that once people recognise the potential of these technologies to network its not enough to simply put up your poster like casting a line into the river. I believe you have to take responsibility and then conceptualise the potential into a learning project in order to recruit like-minded individuals and work with a flexible focus.

So, having said all that I aim to generate my own project and others are welcome to join in if they wish. My learning goal or project here will be to explore a course design for web2.0 and learning.

I will begin by posting different ideas for units and then explore the ideas by trying to put flesh on the bones I create. Others can add, suggest, complain, decline or whatever. That's my infornal learning project in this community.

As a freelancer, I welcome input and work from others. Failing that just input will do as a next best.

cheers,

Nick Bowskill

nicholas.bowskill@gmail.com