So far, I’ve returned to two slideshows I loaded to Flickr some time earlier this year and will likely focus my thinking on ideas from these for my presentation.

1. Quality through personalised learning

2. The business of learning (or, 21st century learning)

I think I’ll focus on learning futures and how flexible learning is defined and can be promoted through this thinking. Some of the key themes I’d like to draw out include:

• learner as teacher
• business IS learning
• the learning design process is a collaborative one with the learner

I’ll start with that and see where I head – shall post an update soon! What do you reckon?

…my particular interest is computer based games but it includes everything from roleplays to quizzes and puzzles and much much more. Games can motivate learners by engaging their imaginations, giving them control over their experiences, challenging them, enabling them to experience authentic and relevant activities and providing multimedia stimulation. I’ve been exploring the use of games in learning for a couple of years now in my work with the Flexible Learning team at the Canberra Institute of Technology…

The Game Learner » About

[image: margoconnell]

What Colin didn’t mention was the fact that he has been researching games through his Masters study; and this blog is, I think, a useful and necessary addition to the edubloggersphere!

Onya Col – will add to my feeds!

technorati tags:gamebased_learning, games, colin_simpson, flexible_learning, computer_games

Blogged with Flock

All of these eportfolio template products we’ve looked at exist in a Thingamajig mindset. Rather than let students use tools that have a broad application outside the boundaries of our college, they push the student to think of eportfolios as dependent on institution-specific technology. They keep the student in an unempowered mindset. They force the student to see technology in the wrong way.

Mike Caulfield » Blog Archive » The Parable of the Thingamajig

A little thought from Mike Caulfield. As I’m thinking of ways to tell e-learning ’stories’ to management, Mike parables current thinking around e-portfolios. Parables make for powerful stories!

…and there I shall leave this Friday!

technorati tags:parable, Mike_Caulfield, stories, storytelling, eportfolios

Blogged with Flock

# THE FIRST KEY TO CHANGE: Relate: You form a new, emotional relationship with a person or community that inspires and sustains hope. If you face a situation that a reasonable person would consider “hopeless,” you need the influence of seemingly “unreasonable” people to restore your hope–to make you believe that you can change and expect that you will change. This is an act of persuasion–really, it’s “selling.” The leader or community has to sell you on yourself and make you believe you have the ability to change. They have to sell you on themselves as your partners, mentors, role models, or sources of newknowledge. And they have to sell you on the specific methods or strategies that they employ.
# THE SECOND KEY TO CHANGE: Repeat: The new relationship helps you learn, practice, and master the new habits and skills that you’ll need. It takes a lot of repetition over time before new patterns of behavior become automatic and seem natural–until you act the new way without even thinking about it. It helps tremendously to have a good teacher, coach, or mentor to give you guidance, encouragement, and direction along the way. Change doesn’t involve just “selling”; it requires “training.”
# THE THIRD KEY TO CHANGE: Reframe: The new relationship helps you learn new ways of thinking about your situation and your life. Ultimately, you look at the world in a way that would have been so foreign to you that it wouldn’t have made any sense before you changed.

How to Save the World

I’m not sure where I’d be (in my head, that is) if Dave wasn’t around to offer some points of focus!

Change is imminent in my workplace – the path is now set, and the time for transition is upon us. Dave has proffered these timely points regarding change management, which I’m blogging here as a reminder for myself, should I feel lost along the way! These points above remind me again of the notion of emergence, or emergent design. Following this, Dave posted a conversation he had with Rob Paterson about the future of education, which I’m now going off to listen to.

I’ll post more in response to this shortly )

technorati tags:change, change_management, Dave_Pollard, emergent_design, future, organisational_change

Blogged with Flock

Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase investigates the ways we interact with technology — a quest that has led him from the villages of Uganda to the insides of our pockets. Along the way, he’s made some unexpected discoveries: about the ways illiterate people use their mobile phones, the new roles the mobile can play in global commerce, and the deep emotional bonds we share with our phones.

TEDBlog: Our cell phones, ourselves: Jan Chipchase on TED.com

Loved these 15 minutes with Nokia researcher, Jan Chipchase. I’ve got some loose thoughts and reactions to this, loosely joined – recommend you watch it if you haven’t already! If you have, what did you make of it? I’d be interested to hear from those who attended Mlearn2007 in Melbourne or the Handheld Learning conference whether you have some points to add here? Chipchase starts off with an idea about what we carry on our person and why. He uses this process to outline our behaviours.

He discusses this in relation to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which helps illustrate our behaviour as we go about our daily lives, interacting, connecting and generally surviving. Chipchase also notes the three things we carry most on us 9and how maslow’s hierarchy of needs might be applied to these): 1) keys (for shelter), 2) money (to buy food) and 3) mobile phone (excellent recovery device, and I’d add connecting device).

Chipchase then discusses then phenomenon of ‘the street’: a place where innovation occurs in true fashion and out of necessity. Jan asks: as designers, what lessons can we learn from the street?

• what does the street say about trust and confidence in (financial) interactions (that we could apply to online and other services)?
• how might we better design such services?
• should we be thinking about Personal Area Network (PAN) designs, clothing and integrated wearable technologies, seeing as we are emotionally connected to tools like our mobile phones?
• even our homes are being identified not by house numbers but by our mobile phone numbers (Jan gives an example of a Ugandan front door inscribed with mobile phone numbers as an identifying feature) – what does this say about our identity? (Alex, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!).

Then Chipchase wraps up with some thoughts and ideas related to these lessons (or questions) from ‘the street’:

• we must consider the speed at which ideas go around
• if we are to embrace ‘big’ ideas we must embrace everyone (and 300 billion is getting there!)
• small and speedy (like mobile phones) highlights the immediacy of objects – we can capitalise on this if we think creatively
• design – no matter what we intend of a design or object, the street will take it and innovate it further beyond our thinking – how do we create room for this in our designs?
• with another 300 billion people connected in the future we really must learn how to listen, because these people will want to be part of the conversation!

I like ‘the street’ phenomenon: it conjures up metaphors like ’streetwise’, ’street ready’, ‘taking it to the street’, and so. I like the thought too (and practice) of a mobile phone being an ATM! I also liked the notion of illiteracy being managed by some via the ‘art of delegation’. An interesting and useful concept worth exploring further in this rapid-changing world that demands more from us in less time than we’d like: think rapid protoyping, accelerated learning approaches, etc, etc!

In all, I reckon it’s the edge at which we live that pushes us to innovate. If we’re too comfortable what’s the urge? How do we then create the discomfort or disruption to continue to feed that urge in positive ways? Move to Nepal perhaps?

Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea: pushing something like FLNW2 in Thailand, for example, is a big move towards this type of disruption, just as working in the Western desert is (having just had my buddies from Jigalong visit Canberra recently), or “the Bronx”, or with prisoners, or in fact with anyone and anything that disrupts our status quo thinking about the world! That’s a big call for most – how about you?