I’m getting ready to make my first “formal” presentation on the work I’ve been doing in technology, teaching and learning. Despite what I thought were relatively forward thinking perspectives on teaching and learning the last few months have really opened my eyes to three important approahces that seem to me to be very important as a doctoral student:
- informal learning — so much of what I have learned and studied has come from experiencing the process myself… I’m not reading about it in books (though I have certainly purchased several and read many more online). If informal learning is described as “out of classroom” experience, then the limitations of the classroom experience are really quite significant. And…. this is true whether the classroom is physical or virtual.
- nomadic learning — I find myself using traditional learning tools less and less… and exploring or finding my starting points by perusing or traveling through the web… sometimes I’m in a dessert (most college web sites, for example) and other times I’m in a richly blossoming oasis (Downes, Siemens, Richardson, and other’s blogs). I find a node that connects with me and then I explore…. learning is not organized, but it is networked… it is not clear, it is fuzzy, and in fact chaotic. (Richardson’s presentation at the Online Connectivism Conference really wrapped some context around this for me).
- continual learning — also referred to as lifelong learning, the value of the traditional classroom experience in fostering lifelong learning is lost on me. The value of informal, chaotic and nomadic learning (which I think of as networked learning) becomes the “the personal learning network” to me. I’ve been exploring Personal Learning Environments, but that concept seems too limited to me.
- networked learning — connected learning at its best
Additionally, my high school, college and first graduate experience worked in an environment where learning as organized, linear and “protected”. What I have discovered as a student in a distributed learning program is that experience did not prepare me to be a scholar in the modern age. To some extent it prepared me to be a receiver but not creator of knowledge. I have learned, throughout my professional career, that life has no answer key. That was not something I was prepared for after my schooling at very fine insitutions. I thought my boss would judge me by a grade… because s/he knew the answer. (Some time I’ll post about my first assignment as an intern in graduate school… and how lucky I was to have the mentor/boss I did!)
Anyway… I’m naming what I am finding works for me as a doctoral student… knowing full well that I am an N of One and that I need to look at this in the context of theory and other practice… the personal learning network… no tools, no rules… not linear… a process and a product all in one. We’ll see how it goes!
