Tell it like it is...
As a young learner and a bit later as a young teacher, I
dreamed of having the classical library of Alexandria on my desktop. I also
dreamed that I could have access to the thoughts of others; their impulses,
their motivations, their conclusions, their successes and their near misses.
That I could readily communicate with like-minded people both near and far.
That I could share their dreams and they mine. Within my lifetime this has all
come true. At the touch of a few keys I have the world at my fingertips, in my
ears and in my eyes. And all I had to do was to learn where to look and master a
few simple skills. Of course I have to be careful not to get knocked down by
crazies but that has always applied in life. As I am older I don’t have to make
the decision like parents and children do – at what age should all this begin
if I want to allow childhood to be physical, psychological and emotional play –
but that is only a matter of control and degree. Not whether but when to
start experiencing 21st century skills. All of this is a question of
healthy balance and will require practice, parental and facilitator support and
help in the growth of wisdom to get that balance right.
So when I, as the new learner, embark on my odyssey to find these 21st century skills what can I expect to await me?
In the construction of my personal learning environment I
will find fellow travellers in life (on social media websites) or people
searching for the same interests as I have (in learning communities). I will be
able to gain access to them everywhere I go through my mobile devices (smart
phone, tablet or phablet). I will become overloaded with possibilities and have
to make crucial decisions about what to access and what to discard. As
Wordsworth wrote: ‘The world is too much with us…’ That will become an on-going
series of major decision-making process in my life; controlling information overload. I
will be able to communicate face-to-face, by mobile, teleconferencing,
videoconferencing, by email, skyping, through the internet, by sms, on social
media, by posting my profile and creating a network Xing or Linkedin or through
slideshare and the like. To search I can use a search engine, a metasearch engine or a
specialist search engine like google scholar or sweetsearch. As tools I will
have my laptop, netbook or tablet, phablet or smart phone. I can view and listen also on my
ipod. I can film with a digital camera and orientate myself or plan travel with
tom tom or garmin (or even do all of these on my mobile phone). I can handle writing,
figures databases and presentations with open office. I can organise my music
and videos with itunes, upload my original musical creations to soundcloud and customize my photos with photoshop and post them on flickr. Of course these
are only well-known examples. For a fuller listing of possibilities see http://www.go2web20.net/ . I can
communicate online with a learning platform, in virtual classrooms and physical
ones with smartboards and get free tutorials with MOOCs or https://www.khanacademy.org/ . The
latter is ‘completely free forever’. I can hone my reactions and live out my
phantasies in online game-playing communities. When I am ready I can provide
myself with a university education to doctorate level and publish the theses I
produce on the way. I can publish my autobiography, my poetry and songs, my art or my hyperlinked novel novel. I can finance my causes through crowdsourcing. To this I can add everything desirable that my fellow users dream up in our collective futures and may much of it be opensource...
The question then is:
‘will learning institutions at all levels be ready in terms of the training
of facilitators and their intellectual acceptance to meet this new challenging digital
age and develop with it into web 3.0 and beyond or will they die out like the
dodo?’
Image: www.en.wikipedia.org (no further info
available)
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