Designing open infrastructures for professional development

Last week I attended a seminar by the Supporting Sustainable e-Learning Forum at Glasgow Caledonia University with Peter Sloep from the Open University of the Netherlands. The seminar and presentation used six “use cases” as the staring points for discussions on the efficacy of networked learning as viable solutions in terms of non-formal professional learning … Read more

social businesses – the sociability of what?

I’ve recently come across a number of posts on the concept of the “social business” such as here as a social networks/ interactionist/ collaborative view of the firm (rather than as the more-than-profit organisation). It reminds me of the notion of informal coalitions or the shadow organisation, or “it ain’t what, its who you know” … Read more

riding the Google Wave

… well technically more like watching someone else ride the Wave. Anyway, a very clear and helpful post on Google Wave from Dion Hinchcliffe here. The potential of Wave in terms as [tacit/ social] knowledge ‘management’, collaboration and learning is immense [or will be a big disappointment – assuming, of course, that organisations have the … Read more

social media platforms for learning

Here is the last in an excellent series of posts on social media platforms for learning from Jane Hart at the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies. Much of the challenge for the provision of qualifications is in the cultural, pedagogical (or should it be andagogical) and bureaucratic changes required to allow the formal accreditation … Read more

more to learning environments

just a quick addition to my previous post on learning environments as I should have referred to this post from Pontydysgu that discusses how/ whether micro-learning objects developed through social learning technologies can and do ‘mature’ into more formalised learning content, eg, through a process of aggregation and validation perhaps. The essence of this for … Read more

learning environments and networks

A great post from Stephen Downes here on personal learning environments [PLEs] and reflecting on the experience of running the connectivism course. I was taken with the argument that the value PLEs is greatly enhanced by extending social networks – a similar argument to the one made here by Malinka Ivanova. The paper reminded me … Read more