Post in response to views of learning objects - week 2 of the MOOC - after reading Downes (2001), viewing Lamb (2009), and Friesen. See first comment below for links
What is a learning object? - Anything and everything, it seems. An activity, a resource, a component of a course or educational session or lesson. Learning episodes are created from these learning objects.
As a non-technical person, just reading the Downes article promoting the case for learning objects swiftly became painful for me. The objections to the concept and use of learning objects in learning design, particularly from the video highlight how 'artificial' and 'unnatural' any classification system and repository becomes when you try and make it universal. I must say, I never really got fully to grips with the Dewey Decimal system. As a student, I'd always prefer to talk to my friends to try and locate relevant and useable material. The fact that it came from my friends acted as a sort of 'quality pre-judging exercise' of the resource - if they understood it, then chances are, I would. (This is already reminding me of those skills that Connectivism (Seimens, 2004) said are so important.
Certainly, a people / relationship basis for sharing materials is more appealing to me. I can see easily how blogging would do this (acting as both a respository and 'shop window', and how other connecting technologies such as Twitter would operate around this).
BUT - what of my own material would I choose to share? I don't I believe I would share everything. Though, thinking now, it's more about when I would share rather than if. There's a confidence in sharing - in that what you've got is of value to others. This tends to grow as relationships do, and I see no reason why that won't happen within online communities of practice or in wider, looser, weakly-tied online networks. The MOOC environment has made me realise the relative strength of the bonds in my H817 tutor group. Sharing and encouragement through these relationships does seem to breed further acts of sharing.