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Informal learning, Google+ and iPads

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 Nov 2012, 23:55

I've set myself a challenge to take mobile learning to the nth degree, 'testing to destruction'.

If I thought the iPad would survive the experience I thought perhaps a jacuzzi or sauna?

Signal might not be good.

In my gap year eons ago I discovered that the hotel owner (4 star) thought it great that guests and staff, including a very lowly teen me, could 'chill' out together in 'his' sauna.

There is relevance and that is the idea of 'informal' learning.

Indeed, I wonder if many OU students, enjoying and enrolled in a 'life of learning' practice in a more informal way then us 'regular' students who (and I applaud it) take it reasonably seriously.

I could knock out the TMAO4 in a first draft before lunch today, not bother with much referencing and checking meaning, grammar etc: and submit expecting to scrape through with a 40 something at worst, a 50 something more likely. The problem I have is enjoying the present too much and even with e-learning being fed the latest through the likes of Zite and Stumbleupon.

Recording our hang-out session may have made for fun viewing.

On the other hand by doing so it radically changes the dynamic. I wouldn't want the student me confused with the business me.

(Four months in to a 12 month fixed contract).

That said I'd love a playback of my slow descent below the frame.

This is the trickster at play.

Belbin I believe categorises people and how they work in teams, I know where I belong! The very fact that it has become a catalyst for conversation shows it's value; where now Elluminate?

I've started to make comparisons in my OU Student Blog.

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Emily Blakey, Sunday, 14 Aug 2011, 09:06)
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Design Museum

Hanging out in Google+ a giggle, that works ... And changes everything!

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 12 Aug 2011, 13:52

Google+ Hang-out  

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Three fellow MAODErs and I spent over an hour 'hanging out' - technical term sad in Google+

Once you have the software loaded it was extraordinarily intuitive.

You speak and your image takes the main frame.

Easy to share docs or type messages. (or was it guys?)

Without a moderator it wad more like very old friends in a bar abroad, except that one person was sitting on a bed, chatting with hubby alongside, eating yoghurt and behaving as if we were all perched on the end of the bed or doing our teeth in the bathroom.

Like nothing else you are bringing people into your home.

I became immediately consciousness of needing a shave.

I had expected to have some choice over whether to appear in vision or not.

At least I wasn't in the bath, though people did wander off to the bathroom or to make a coffee/answer the phone, as you would do if chilled out in your own home. Weird to feel so drawn into the context of each person's 'learning' space. A cat jumped on this bed and I started a chain reaction whereby we all reached out and through the frames to stroke it - the worked too.

We talked shop, a TMA due on Monday, held up charts to the screen etc: no thought of needing a headset or separate webcam, more a case of adjusting the lighting and seating arrangements.

Will this change expectations of students who use Google+ when it comes to online tutorials?

Yes, this was like being in the room with each of these people. We have of course never met in person before but were behaving like siblings at a second cousin's wedding.

 

Permalink 5 comments (latest comment by Katherine Tee, Sunday, 14 Aug 2011, 13:37)
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