Bricolage

Lorraine expressed concern about the amount of information available on the web and pondered the difficulty of validating it. Debra reported the frequency of travel businesses talking up their own products - flogging was the term she introduced.

Their thoughts were fresh in my mind when I found two other sites - one allegedly “debunking the learning styles myth” and another feel good video of a shop assistant who made a difference by inserting thoughts for the day in customers’ grocery bags.

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Some years ago a colleague and I were both given a new bit of technology - it could have been a mobile phone, a blackberry or even a car. It wasn’t any of them, but our behaviour is transferable.

He sat down and read the manual. I started making calls or messages or miles.

Debra thought it was Gen Y that jumped in without reading the instructions. Andrew explained that Gen Y is equalisation of the sexes - now women are allowed to do what men always did - in this case ignore the instructions.
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• There seems to me to be a continuum that we follow when we learn through on-line learning.

The first step is awareness. Knowing what is available. This seems to me a much bigger task on-line than in the traditional world.

The next step is “how to”. Some of these tools take longer to learn than others. Just the technical use.

Next comes when to. When to use a blog, when to use tags, when to use a wiki, when to use whatever Ning and Netvibes are.

All of these things have to precede use of the tools. And I suspect that there are some other precursors, too. Plain English writing, citation, judgement on content validity ….

The list goes on.

Ron and Sue Zemke believe

The next five years will eclipse the last fifty in terms of hard data production on adult learning. For the present, we must recognize that adults want their learning to be problem-oriented, personalized and accepting of their need for self-direction and personal responsibility.

according to an article in Innovation Abstracts

The catch is that the article was published in 1984.

Have a look and see if there is a single one of their thirty points that you can mount a credible case against. Then have a think about a recent adult learning experience that you attended and see how many points out of thirty you would award.