Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Both


Digital moment

And of course, both of them were fabulous! Listening to Michele helped me to refine my thoughts. I've realised that what I’ve started calling participatory learning, or learning through participation, is actually rather different from collaborative learning, although it shares some of the same features. Participatory learning involves some sort of distributed activity and the technologies that are necessary to facilitate it. AMV works as a great example of this. Most descriptions of collaboration foreground face-to-face communication and co-presence; learning through participation is less bounded and allows for incremental knowledge building across time and space. The collective resources that build up over time in online spaces such as AMV communities, wikis or photosharing sites like Flickr are indicative of participatory learning. The individual contributes, but determines the extent and conditions of his or her own participation. In this way the degree of individual learning is personalised, whilst group knowledge aggregates. I’m thinking about a learning conversation, or an expert apprenticeship that you can archive, exit and re-engage with, on your own terms, but also one that you can re-wind or re-mix at will. Michele's AMV analysis seems to indicate what some of the key elements of participatory learning might me. More on this to follow, no doubt!

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