It’s Personal: Learning Spaces, Learning Webs

It’s Personal: Learning Spaces, Learning Webs

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

My slides for the upcoming PLE/PLN Online Symposium hosted by the University of Manitoba are now available for viewing above. In 'It's Personal: Learning Spaces, Learning Webs', I attempt to compare and contrast a number of learning philosophies, and define some of the (un)boundaries of informal and self organised learning - the fertile ground within which personal learning approaches flourish. Above is the scary baby from the cover slide: I will present this slide show with live commentary on Thursday from the Cork Institute of Technology over the Elluminate platform. I'm looking forward to hearing comments from those who are interested in this fascinating area of learning development.

Casting the pod

I have just been alerted to a new podcast available here that covers my presentation on self-organised learning and Web 2.0 that I gave in June at the St Virgil Centre for the Edumedia Conference in Salzburg, Austria. Edited by Andreas Auwarter (part of the Pontydysgu team), it offers links to my blog and also the powerpoint presentation I gave. I talk about mentoring, personalised learning, nomadic learning, and how blogs and wikis can be used in teacher education, and I explore the idea behind using social software to support professional learning. I also outline some of the findings that came from the MentorBlog project we conducted at the University of Plymouth earlier in the year. I also touch on the idea of using microblogs (such as Twitter) and images to show how students can capture their experiences whilst on their placements as student teachers.

It's warts and all - including asides, quips and interaction with the audience at the conference venue. Have a listen and let me know what you think.

Ich bin ein Berliner

I love Berlin, and cannot believe it has taken me so long to come back here. It is truly magical at and around Christmas time, with many of the trees in the streets lit up with lights. I am at Online Educa and have just witnessed one of the best keynotes I have ever seen. Let me attempt to encapsulate some of the content from the first session.

The first keynote was presented by Professor Sugata Mitra, seen above left, who is an Indian national who now works at the University of Newcastle. He reported on a 5 year long and ongoing project to place computers in Indian villages. He set up videocameras to record children as they interacted with the computer and each other, in what has been dubbed the Hole in the Wall project. Amazingly, he showed evidence that not only do the children teach themselves to use the computers, they also learned English as a result of their use of browsers such as Google. To cap it all, he amazed the 2000 plus delegates with the question - does language matter... and showed evidence that not only had the children learnt to speak English - they had also learned complex and difficuly concepts such as genetics, and could answer questions when prompted.

More to follow as time and space allow, but for now, goodnight from a very chilly and festive Berlin!