Hot, Cross and bothered

We are cooking here in Salzburg. The weather is just as warm and humid as it was yesterday. But we are cooking in another way too. We have just enjoyed a very good and very interesting opening session at Edumedia 08 here in Salzburg. Jay Cross has just spoken about informal learning and made some interesting and thought provoking points. He tells the story of how an American professor told two groups of students to read a paper in preparation for an examination. He also told the second group that the paper was controversial and not to be trusted. On average, the second group of students scored higher grades. His conclusion - uncertainty creates better learning engagement.

Jay made the point that with the exponential rate of change in the world, particularly in technological terms, knowledge is rapidly and continually going out of date. He argues that instead of teaching students knowledge and content, we should be training them how to adapt to changes instead. The connections, he remarked, are more important than the nodes. In other words, people communicating with each other in conversation and collaboration is more important than content. Content becomes important to the students when they generate it themselves. Then it becomes personal and personally relevant. Presenting challenges, said Jay, is more effective than offering solutions.

To the left is a picture (courtesy of Stefan Karlhuber) of me with Jay Cross, Graham Attwell and Marcus Specht, in an unconference mode. I have had a devil of a job Twittering from the conference though, as you will see if you have tried to follow my comments. The connection from my iPhone to the network has been atrocious, and I am hot and bothered by this, because I have lots of thoughts, and cant get them posted very easily. Graham Attwell and Mark Kramer have both had much more success, the rotters. Graham tells me he used Skype, and it worked a lot better than my iPhone....

Oh, and I was mentioned in dispatches. My photo (taken last night by him in the beergarden) was featured in one of Jays slides. Makes me feel a little better...