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« Conference etiquette | Main | SLASA calendar 2009 »
Saturday Nov 08, 2008

Learning networks

Today I am enjoying listening to presentations from the Learning Technologies 2008 conference while I prepare workshop sessions for the edayz08 and VITTA2008 conferences.

As usual George Siemens' presentation is spot on and would be perfect as an introduction to me.edu.au workshop sessions. George's point about a learning network being different from a social network is worth reinforcing. The difference = intentionality and focus.
His broad definition of learning network is "any group of people and resources that are connected", and he gives examples that include libraries, search engines, friends, newsletters and blogs. The learning network has to have some attributes that help us to learn, and it is contextual. The type of learning we need helps determine the type of network we need. The people we listen to, what we've read, the concepts we've thought about determine our level of understanding.

Obviously me.edu.au is a learning network rather than a social network. It is true that you don't have to be actively involved by contributing to your learning network in order to learn yourself - but surely it helps the network ecology to contribute as well as consume?

Other things to think about from George:

  • Is 'learning network' the new 'recommended reading list'?
    New model for teaching should be more asking of students: "How are you connected? Who are you reading? Is there a connection of repetition in your reading? What do you need to prune from your network? What people shouldn't you be reading any more?
  • As Mother told you: "Be careful of who you choose as your friends because that influences the person you become."
  • We need better language to describe the minute aspects of networks: quality, understanding, connection etc

Analysing the obvious
Video
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=45940575
Audio: mp3 version without the ads - thanks to Mike
http://media.mikeseyfang.com/lt08gsiemens.mp3
Slides
http://www.slideshare.net/gsiemens/learning-technologies2008-mooloolaba-presentation-724949

Tags: vitta2008 networking learning networks edayz08 siemens me.edu.au lt08 social networked learning
Posted at 06:13PM Nov 08, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[1]

Comments:

Hi Pru I think that's a great idea. Having something short and powerful about networks to start a session about me.edu.au. Also a thought for a few years down the track - where does student work and teacher learning collide. I think at the moment you would add your classblog feed to me.edu.au or link to posts in your own blog. This would allow teachers to really understand how it looks when a student does this. However I can see that as time goes on the line between the learning network and the learning about learning network will become very jagged and interesting. Hope that makes some kind of sense. :)

Posted by Concetta Gotlieb on November 08, 2008 at 06:48 PM CST #

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Pru Mitchell


I am a teacher and education librarian interested in helping people find stuff. This is a place for aggregating my professional learning and sharing i...
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