Web 2.0 - Education 2.0 : Weller

Weller, M. (2009) ‘Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change’, On the Horizon, vol.17, no.3, pp.181–9; also available online at http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/ .m/ welleronthehorizon.pdf

Key points

•  Online learning  environment is route by which university understands/maintains it’s relevance to society
•  Need to change metaphor/pedagogies for learning (although using same metaphors help to cross the chasm).
•  Issues in current education – limited curricula; personalisation (inflexibility); meeting changing demands; informal learning
• Affordances (like that of lecture hall) at odds with what most educators would view as key components of learning – dialogue,reflection,critical analysis
• Also at odds with experience outside education / using social networks
•  Conole 2008 – learning theory has shifted to social and situated learning from a behaviourist, outcome based, individual learnin
• ‘Decentralisation’ – participation/network/social relies on a decentralised model
• ‘Social Learn’ to discover how learners behave in this sphere; thus develop appropriate tech and supp structures and pedagogies. 
•  As tools become easier to use, methods for integration simpler, centralised system less applicable (costs of integrating technology online has been reduced, so feasible for individual)
• Shirky “when we change the way we communicate, we change society”

“higher education will face a challenge when learners have been accustomed to very facilitative, usable, personalisable and adaptive tools for both learning and socialising, why will they accept standardised, unintuitive, clumsy and out of date tools in formal education they are paying for”

Comment

I enjoy reading Weller. The use of anecdotes and the rhetoric used is very engaging. Back in Block one Sfard talked about the idea of changing metaphors, and pretty much every article you read around using technology in education, talks about the need for new pedagogies. We once again pick up this idea of life technologies being different to learning technologies. But that little niggle remains in my brain - do students want to use the technologies that they use in life for learning? Do learners know that they are meant to making their own choices about learner? At 35, I know that I can and I do. I wonder whether we assume that this is what students want, especially when looking at some of the research in weeks 13 and 14, where they was some clear feedback that students except Universities to tell them when and how to use technology in their learning.

The idea of decentralisation is interesting. I think that it is more of a 're' centralisation to another point. There are still central hubs or organisations (facebook, google, ebay, twitter) that draw people together. Does the fact that they are not part of the 'establishment' mean they are decentralised? I guess this is my issue with the idea of power to the people. There is still a meritocracy evident - those who can, have the technology, know what to do, shout the loudest.....(as Cuban pointed out last week).