EAMIL Microlearningelearning Quo Vadis Norm Friesen to speak

EAMIL: Microlearning/e-learning Quo Vadis? Norm Friesen

“to speak about pedagogy is to speak about everything at once. ” – Jean Paul (c 1800)

Themes • • Definitional Styles, habits, attention, practice, tools Overload, organizing, tagging Technology mis-appropriation

Microlearning • Microcontents as fine granularity learning objects that are created in concrete environments that have some inherent subjectivity, and that are in many cases informal, not following a strong educational intention.

Microlearning (Wikipedia) deals with relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities. Generally, the term 'microlearning' refers to micro-perspectives in the context of learning, education and training. More frequently, the term is used in the domain of E-learning and related fields in the sense of a new paradigmatic perspective on learning processes in mediated environments on micro levels.

Microlearning • Aranuld Leene: Semantic Web = E-learning 2. 0 = Microlearning • Aranuld Leene: Web 2. 0: Using the Internet without using the Web. • Martin Lindner: Always already microlearning. • Arnauld Leene: What is it: it is how I use it. (Personal, “authentic” use. )

Tools Used; Show me your Practice • del. icio. us, Flickr, aggregators, Net. News. Wire • Attention XML • Citeulike • Tagworld • Webnote. Happy • Tagwatcher. com • Furl, Info. Clouds

Cognitive Styles and Attitudes George Siemens • Media Generations • Learning as occurring through the strengthening/weakening of connections • Re-writing these pathways and connection, coping with uncertainty • Shared symbolic forms, language

Cognitive Styles and Attitudes • Evolution and acquisition of cognitive habits and capabilities • “…we suggest that the objects of thought are not always inside the brain. ” • Information habits, tools used, when and why • Coulter, 2005: “‘Mind’ is either a vernacular notion with commonplace uses, or a philosophical reification. … [it] actually can impede our understanding of how we speak and hear, how we say and to things, in our everyday lives. ”

Habitus? Habitus can sometimes be understood as those aspects of culture that are anchored in the body or daily practices of individuals, groups, societies, and nations. It includes the totality of learned habits, bodily skills, styles, tastes,

Habitus? • and other non-discursive knowledges that might be said to "go without saying" for a specific group. The scope of the term has been extended to include a person's beliefs and dispositions.

Overload • Information overload; filtering • Following voices, or tiny chunks • Hypertext navigation and new cognitive styles • Attention, behaviour and interfaces • How we manage info overload in everday life and practices

• Filtering: power • Ecosystem of ideas: healthy ones survive. • New literacies

Wisdom of Crowds • Cognition: Market judgment, which he argues can be much faster, more reliable, and less subject to political forces • Coordination of behavior, such as not colliding in moving traffic flows, crowding in popular restaurants. experimental economics, He examines how common understanding within a culture allows remarkably accurate judgments about specific reactions of other members of the culture.

Wisdom of Crowds • Cooperation: How groups of people can form networks of trust without a central system controlling their behavior or directly enforcing their compliance.

The Crowd omnipresent but amorphous anonymity • We have all encountered “they-selves” in our traditional classrooms. These are the students who refuse to question their own presuppositions about the world by appealing to dogma, conventional opinion, “common sense, ” or a generalized consensus They think as “people” do, as in “people think that studying philosophy is a waste of time, ” or “people don’t wear that style any more. ” David Koukal

Dual Folksonomy Triad

Technological Innovation • Dodge-ball (Th. Vander Wal): Stay-at home parents; initially created for barscene • IRC (Arnauld Leene): Created for remote commuication; used in wireless classrooms for comments; additional layer of communication • IRC with Skype

Social Software • Mis-using the technology • One artifact, software system is realized as a different technology in different contexts • Design through participation • Contra: Technological Determinism • “Medium is the Message”

Continuity Principle The new grows out of the old, repeats the old, embraces, reimagines and extends the old. To understand the Web, I’m saying --to understand our emerging digital culture-- we need a continuity not a discontinuity principle (Thorburn, 2004; 24, emphasis added).