Apart from
- needing coffee
- needing sleep
- needing eyedrops to remove half Melbournes tree dirt from my eyeballs....
What have been my immediate knee jerk reactions to what I've heard here at mlearn.
We are beginners, explorers and newbies
There is very little we actually KNOW, standards are almost impossible, the variety of devices, platforms, codecs - even powercables is almost overwhelming.
The debate for me seems to encompass three major streams.
Content creation - what should we be creating
Should we be creating at all? If we should, what kinds of content should we be creating?
What kinds of content do people want/need? perhaps what we need are reference tools, and reference skills.
I heard an example yesterday by the keynote speaker - Angela McFarlane - where she referred to a primary school child working on bug identification referencing a dictionary on her PDA to help her understand a question. Should we be dealing with providing the tools to reference and communicate, not deliver specifically educationally related content?
Is it about content or communication
The world is a source of endless information - the Internet is a source of endless information. Social networking, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious - all these things focus on the communication of information and ideas. I've previously blogged about Andrew Keen's perspective, and how peer produced knowledge is both ancient and modern. Therefore is mlearning more about accessing this information in meaningful ways? - about 'people teaching people'.
What needs to happen to make this communication and mlearning occur?
Pedagogy? - sounds dull - but is it? In terms of mlearning - is it really giving people the chance to learn everywhere at all times.
Can we really expect people to just know how use devices. Again i heard Angela McFarlane yesterday discussing some of the fundamental changes which need to occur. Simple stuff really:
- We used to teach people to organise and use their exercise books - but we give them a mobile device and do not teach, for example file naming conventions.
- Do people really now how to effectively text input into mobile devices - and if not, what does this stop us doing?
- We are ASSUMING people know how to research, reference and evaluate multiple sources of information.
Apologies for the slightly chaotic nature of this post - but if I don't put these thoughts down then I won't ever do it...
Over and out and off for coffee, eyedrops and more listening.
