From Portfolios to Ecologies
Working with Rudolf and Bee on finishing up a paper for the WiaOC 2005 proceedings got me thinking about Learning Ecologies and how they could be of use to a global education program like Friends World, whose main focus of evaluation has been the learning portfolio. With centers in different countries and students moving from center to center throughout their four years, all the while having unique cultural and linguistic experiences, this is a program begging for learning ecologies. It would work like this:
Upon enrolling in the program, students are given a personal learning dashboard (the mythical EduGlu) along with a tutorial workshop on how to use it to connect with people and learning resources. From there, they are plugged into a Friends World install of Elgg, where they are encouraged to blog, podcast, tag, and get to know their classmates at other centers. Their Elgg account in combination with the EduGlu dashboard would serve as their living, breathing learning portfolio, a.k.a. their Personal Learning Ecology (PLE). It would highlight the status of their learning at any time, and would contain a whole archive of past activity, along with a searchable repository of more complete works: papers, presentations, podcasts, etc. It would also be used as a social networking tool to put them in “conversation” with experts, tutors, and peers, all of whom share an interest in what the student is learning. It would also play an important role in meeting the institution’s guidelines for evaluation and accreditation. And this learning ecology would stay with them through their tenure with the program and beyond, as they move into their careers, or onto graduate school. In fact, considering the stress of what many college students go through during graduation time (what on earth am I going to do?), the transition could be effortless by comparison, for they will have built up a whole network of contacts who know them and their interests.
As Friends World is an experiential education program, where students learn by doing (and then reflecting), these ecologies could just as easily be called Personal Doing Ecologies. For most people, as Jeremy points out, doing something meaningful is the real focus, while learning happens in the process. And since the act of blogging and social networking encourages a reflective, conversational stance, the learning process is bound to be enhanced.
By the way, check out the blogs and podcasts students are creating at Friends World Program’s East Asia Center.
Crazy Hobbit » Good fried rice. on 21 Mar 2006 at 3:43 pm
[...] Back to the topic. I had mentioned earlier one of my concerns about placement of goals. For example, an MMORPG that I tend to like is called Fly For Fun. In it, many people can interact online, and eventually when they reach level 20 (I believe the max is 99ish), they gain the ability to get either a broomstick or hoverboard, and thus able to fly. However, I notice many players play FlyFF for the sole purpose of flying, and thus they level to 20, fly around for a bit, and then quit the game. This always bothered me, because they tended to not enjoy the game, and not ever return to it. I felt that students may feel the same about this class, making a blog for the sake of passing the class, but not really doing anything constructive or interesting with it, because their goals are set too short. This idea sparked something in Aaron, our teacher, which he was actually just thinking about this this morning as well. An idea about what is called the Personal Learning Ecology. This is another metaphor for the p2p concept of a read/write web, instead of a read only web. As in a nature based ecology, an ecology on the web is the interactions of a large number of bloggers who sometimes come together to share ideas and conversation, and then sometimes split apart and share things with other members of the ecology. The PLE is constantly in motion, and everyone learns something, as well as teaches. In this environment, the roles of Teacher-Apprentice are constantly switiching. As Aaron posted out, my blog about Hyperobjects is something he knows next to nothing about, and thus is taking on the role of the apprentice, while his blogs on teaching theory is something I know hardly anything about, and thus I become the apprentice. Unlike static school systems, where there are clear definitions and roles of all participants, a PLE would provide education through peer discussions, finding someone who knows more, and teaching those who know less. Aaron seems to be interested in education, and thus his blog post focuses on how this idea of an ecology could be applied to school systems that would overtake the old style of heirarchical education. [...]