allowing students the freedom to assemble the pieces of their (own) course
but I feel there are more issues involved. One is the problem of information overload. So I was intrigued to read Harold Jarche’s blog entry on precisely this aspect. Quoting Jon Husband referring to Constellation W,
This next era will create a society of knowledge; its principal tool will be the Internet 2 while its principal handicap will be too-large amounts of information that is not in context.
Harold has developed his own PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) system to deal with this. Check out the diagram, and the comment from Stephen Downes. (More on his PKM here). In another entry (I just added Jarche to my Google Reader, so these entries are coming like British busses – all at once), Harold quotes Downes asking ‘what’s the underlying theory of informal learning?’ The post includes a link to the Informal Learning Blog, and a post by Jay Cross which likens learning to a sound mixer:
Imagine, if you will, a learning mixer. You could slide the switches to
give the learners a little more control here while shaving development
time there…The Delivery slider moves from courses and push (formal) to
conversations and pull (informal). The Duration slider goes from hours
(formal) to minutes (informal). The Subject matter ranges from
curriculum (what the organization says, formal) to discovery (what the
individual needs, informal) Timing goes from outside of work to during
work. Development time ranges from months (events, formal) to minutes
(connections, informal).
Harold has a more recent entry on informal learning or what some have dubbed free range learning. Perhaps this is close to what Aaron was blogging about.
powered by performancing firefox