WE/ME in epedagogy design

Owen says “hello”.

He adds: I am running a course on Learning and Second Life for anyone interested in doing it as part of their epedagogy masters. The course will be worth 5 credits.

The course will be entirely online, and will involve chats in Skype; inworld explorations in Second Life (and hopefully Active Worlds by way of comparison); and course timetables, project plans, documentation and discussion on Airset.

The course starts on Tuesday February 5 at 20.30 Helsinki time, with an introductory Skype session. So you know what you will be getting into, I have published the current version of the course description on Zoho, and you can read it here.

If you want to enroll then please email me at owen@owenkelly.net. If you know someone who might want to enroll then please tell them.

Now that the project I was involved in has finished I have (as promised) written it up as my final essay for Jaap’s VLE course. There are in fact two interlinked essays. One describes the events of Semano Semano, and the other describes the pedagogical approaches we adopted to achieve what we did.

The first is here: http://www.owenkelly.net/2007/05/15/semano-semano/
The second is here: http://www.owenkelly.net/2007/05/25/second-life-a-component-in-a-vle/

Together they form my assignment.

A third bonus essay will follow in time tying our approaches into current pedagogical theory in a more technical way. 

I would be VERY happy if some people would be able to find the time to read them and post comments. I am genuinely excited about what we are doing, and I want to find time to talk to people about it while we are all together in Helsinki.

Have a good weekend!

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