WE/ME in epedagogy design

John Connell has written an interesting piece about the relationship between pedagogy and technology.

He argues that it “is an absolute truth that the technological basis of the society we inhabit will have a profound effect on the nature and form of education that can take place in that society. Indeed, new technologies can change what we mean by education because they change what it means to be educated.”

I found the piece via the RSS feed from George Siemen’s elearnspace site.

I am also giving a seminar, starting in the first week in April. It belongs to the seminar series “KnowledgeFormation” - with the focus on “Change of media - change of educational settings”. At wiki.christinaferner.de you find a description of the seminar.
There will be synchronous events on Tuesday, 14-16 p.m. (German time). The seminar will be mainly based on project work and discussions via Skype or Adobe Breeze. The project work will be based on building up a media-rich knowledge base in a wiki.

If you want to enroll, or if you have any questions, please leave a comment or write a mail to christina.ferner@uni-hamburg.de

Hello ePedagogy Fellows!
Within the first week of April my first Seminar for the ePedagogy Program will start. The Title will be “Premesis of eLearning” and it deals with… yes, eLearning.
You will find the description of the Seminar here.
22 Participants from Hamburg already signed up, but the concept of the seminar takes into account that there might be participants from anywhere else where you will find a Internet connection.
We will have some synchronous Sessions on Tuesday 10.00-12.00 (UTC/GMT +1 hour) and a lot of work in groups, more or less asynchronous, but you should be available (online) during this time.
There will be Tasks every week, and if you like you can already start with the first one…
If you don’t have time to join us regularly think of participate via the blog even sometimes, would be nice.

An ”ecology of learning” would change our current thinking of encapsulated and definite VLE containers. It is hard to visualize the idea of a learning environment by contrasting it, e.g. with the description of an educational environment, which seems to be much easier. The dynamism of a learning environment (mass media, daily perception and sensations, informal and formal education, edutianment etc. ) should not be confused with a variation on the theme of education (e.g. instructional design, educational technology etc.) When this happens, ideas about a learning environment become a variation on the theme of education. But if we include the way people interact in exploring, discovering, creating, thinking, making, doing their own unique set of situations and circumstances in the confluence of everyday life then I believe we begin to approach a more useful perspective to explore possibilities for learning.That would allow an assumption that if we change enviroments for learning, the possibilities for learning will change as well. Changing environments whether it is in real or in virtual contexts changes our modes of interaction, they literally change ourselves.Would learning proceed as something that is purely organic, if we define a learning environment as a natural environment?

References:AN ECOLOGY OF LEARNING ANDTHE ROLE OF eLEARNING IN THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENThttp://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN007791.pdf