(Cross posted to ETI) If you’re looking for a great example of how the Web is changing things, look no further than this post by Alan Levine which describes the wonderful evolution of a real life presentation given by Nancy White into an online multimedia version collaboratively constructed by a cadre of far flung, benevolent learners connected by RSS feeds and a desire to add to the conversation. Read the whole thing, but the summary from Alan is
Doesn’t this set of unplanned, network-enabled collaborations add so much more valuable context to the experience? Let’s follow the geographic trail- starting from a session presented and recorded in Vancouver BC, audio loaded to a blog in Arizona, images uploaded from Seattle, a movie produced from Hong Kong, and a distilled session summary from Portugal!
But the best part is the exchange of ideas in the comments that follow. Dave Lee pushes Alan’s upbeat assessment of the events by asking
I have to wonder how do we convince the average professor who hasn’t moved much beyond powerpoint being a glorified outlining tool that such feats of internet wizardry really are as difficult as they might at first seem? How do we get a corporate line manager who has never built a chart based on an excel speradsheet into a Word document to grasp the concept of small pieces loosely joined?
Great question. And the answers are worth checking out. But here is what I think is the key statement of the whole thread, added by Nancy White herself:
This is the community and the wider network at play. I know I would never had found and learned all the tools to put it all together. But I could bring a piece.
That’s exactly what George Seimens and connective learning is all about. It’s loading what you do know into the network and learning from the others who have other pieces, skills, ideas to contribute. We don’t have to know everything about everything any more, not only because we can’t but because our networks can store it away for us. Like Alan says:
…my sets of skills are always evolving (or decaying) as I learn more by tapping into my remote network, a rather startling shift of embracing my own ignorance (expertise is over-rated) and bathing in what others share.
This is the way learning takes place, by “bathing in what others share” and then by sharing what we know back to the community. Learning as process, not event.
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