Personal Blogs

Week 5 of the course has started and the first assignment (which I haven't started) is due in soon and my blog has only got up to week 2 so far... This is not good!

During this week, we mainly focussed on metaphors of learning i.e. ways in which we can understand and describe what learning is.  During week 4, we then went on to look at definitions of learning.

Hypothesis

Learning is complex and as a result humans use metaphors to help understand what it is but no one metaphor is a complete description so it is important to maintain an understanding of when you are using a metahpor, why and ensuring that no one metahpor clouds your thinking or teaching/work disproportionately.

Discussion

Sfard (1998) argues that the language of teaching and learning commonsly revolves around the metaphor of learning as acquistionse e.g. gaining or accumulating knowledge, attaining understanding etc.  This acquisition metaphor (AM) is prevalent in teacher-centred education and is essentially orthodoxy.

Other metaphors used include a participation metaphor (PM) that replace static concepts of knowlege with active ones like knowing and use socail verbs like "reflective discourse" and "development through participation"

Even some social theories of learning rely more on AM than PM i.e. the idea that collective understanding is transferred to the individual through interaction and then internalised.  This is predominantly AM rather than PM as the participation is only really a means of transferring knowledge, not constructing it (Sfard, 1998).

Bayne (2205) ilustrated another metaphor, that of identity change (IC) whereby identity is key e.g. the identity of the learner and that these identities can shift as learning takes place.  As students learn enough to begin to teach their peers, their view of their own identity shifts and this is a way of representing learning.  A classic example is the journey from apprentice to journeyman and ultimately master; as the apprentice learns so their identity changes.

There was then significant debate about these metaphors and how useful they were.  There was a general feeling that PM was more applicable to an understanding of how learning can be developed rather than what it is.

Conclusion

Metahors are useful in that, when you reflect upon them for what they are and look beneath them, they can reveal cultural or philosophical bias and also that they can help you challenge orthodox understandings of what learning (and teaching) are.

The broad consensus was was  acquisition can be useful for understanding part of the process of learning i.e. the learner taking something from their environment (teacher, peer group, resources etc).  However, that was just one dimention, real learning was when this was reflected upon, and a shift in competence or self-perception (IC) took place.  PM was more useful in understaning potential mechanisms by which learning could take place rather than understanding what learning itself was.

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References

On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing one  Sfard, 1998

http://edr.sagepub.com/content/27/2/4.short

Deceot. desire and control - the identities of learners and teachers in cyberspace. Bayne 2005

http://www.malts.ed.ac.uk/staff/sian/desirepaper.htm

OK, this is the first of my posts on the theories, debates and practices of online and distance education and is taken from week 1 of H800.

Hypothesis

People born after 1993 (for some reason) are different from us and they can't focus on anything for more than 2 minutes, their brains are wired differently from us and all they can do is skim read stuff. However adults, including experienced researchers and academics, also skim read stuff now and rarely read anything in depth. Society is dumbing down (I jest not) and the world is doomed (I jest)!

Discussion

The news about skim reading comes from looking at library systems and of course people skim read things there because they are lookign for the things they want to print or loan or download to read in detail later.

Secondly, the issue these days is not finding information but sifting information, we have more information at our fingertips than has ever been the case in the whole of human history (library at Alexandria? Pah!) so this 'horizontal' skim reading has been necessitaated by the volume of material to be taken into account.

Yes, there is a propensity for those immersed in the online world to skim, to muti-task and to juggle and yes it does change they way they interact with other things like books.  So what?  If the purpose of work/life/education is to get a job done, get it done and do something else.

Yes, this trait is more common amongst young people but that is because they get it and have adapted to the world they live in.  Is it a trait exclusive to the young? No.  Want refernces? Google "Prensky net generation" and "debunking prensky net generation"

Conclusion

The world is moving on and people are adapting to it.  'skim reading' is a necessary adaptation to the information infrastructure.

Anyone of any age can adapt to the new way of working and learning, it is not restricted to the young, you just need to accept that there is a perfectly valid reason for not reading every book cover to cover and move on.

Academic research is of course important but that is not the only reason people read and nor is it the only way to learn.  The fact that researchers are reading more sources but reading them in less detail is not the end of civilisation as we know it.  (I should emphasises that this last point is my own conclusion and not that of the course and or the academics involved in the papers we read.)