I found this last post of Martin Terre Blanche extremely intriguing.
George Siemens is definitely onto something with his ideas about networked learning. His latest contribution is a piece arguing that learning design should be about designing ecosystems rather than about designing courses:
“My latest contribution is a piece arguing that learning design should be about designing ecosystems rather than about designing courses:
“We should be focusing on designing ecologies in which learners can forage for knowledge, information, and derive meaning. What’s the difference between a course and an ecology? A course, as mentioned is static – a frozen representation of knowledge at a certain time. An ecology is dynamic, rich, and continually evolving. The entire system reacts to changes – internal or external. An ecology gives the learner control – allowing her to acquire and explore areas based on self-selected objectives. The designer of the ecology may still include learning objectives, but they will be implicit rather than explicit.”
I definitely subscribe to this idea of rethinking the way we propose courses and we think about teaching. Personally I strive for a middle-earth approach between the open ended, multi-brainset, constructivist approach and the self-regulated, computer assisted collaborative learning. I think the way in should be finding a script that structures the interaction and leaving enough room in that script to support multiple attitudes/abilities.
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