ID 2.0??

This post is in response to a blog post by Archana, a colleague of mine. Her blog post, Speak Out is a good example of blogs that record one’s learning in the work place. It’s a great resource center, especially for newbie IDs such as myself, to plow from. It would probably be a good idea to read her post, ID close to extinction? to make sens of this post.

Dear Archie

I started to write a comment to your post, but it grew long, so I decided to make it my blog post for the day 🙂

Just to add to what you’ve said in your post, I certainly don’t think that ID is headed towards extinction, but I do believe that our role is evolving. And as in any other process of evolution, I think our role is becoming more sophisticated, subtle and complex.

While a lot of people (potential learners) are aware of web 2.0 tools such as blogs, social networking forums, video casts etc, they are yet to realize the learning potential of these. Web 2.0 tools, at least in the Indian set up, are largely still looked at as tools for entertainment and for maintaining a social circle. Why else would companies and educational institutions restrict their use? Therefore, I think an instructional designer’s role will certainly involve exploring and pushing learners to realize the learning potential of these tools.

Also, there are several web 2.0 tools today, which can be quite overwhelming from learner’s point of view. Researching these tools and matching them to learner and course needs is also an important aspect of our role. I for one believe that an instructional designer armed with her background in studying a learner, the learning environment and the course requirements is the best judge of the most appropriate tools. For more on this, follow the comment thread to an earlier post of mine- Learner2.0- two videos.

Therefore, I guess our role is changing from facilitating learning to what I see as a larger task of facilitating the construction of a Personal Learning Environment.

Social networks to the rescue

Given below is an account about using social networks for trouble shooting at the workplace. The article is written by Ashim, the computer geek god at Kern, whom everyone turns to in times of crisis. When you’ve read his piece, you will notice that despite being a ‘techie’, his methods of finding solutions/help are actually quite simple, something that even all of us lesser beings can adopt :).

His account has actually made me re-think my ideas about a techie. Suddenly, they don’t seem such an intimidating lot after all. What perhaps sets them apart, is their ability to evolve very quickly on the world wide web, adopt new tools, revamp their personal learning environment. Knowing about new internet tools is one thing, but leveraging them on an everyday basis to trouble shoot, requires one to think out of the box and be willing to experiment. It’s my hunch that the learner 2.0 will be able to do this with extraordinary ease, once s/he opens up to the possibility of using his/her play tools for learning.

———————————————————————————————

Since I work mostly on Windows (read:metaphor for life), I face problems all the time like sudden crashes, unexpected reboots and virus attacks.

For instance last month, some office computers were infected with a virus called protecfile.vbs. This guy made all XP machines do silly things like- not letting access any folder and making the CD drive pop out suddenly. And the in-house anti-virus could not detect it.

As ‘geek’ and ‘google’ go together, I started searching for the solution on the internet. There are a number of places where you can find solutions to such problems. In fact, you can find solutions to just about anything- but more of that later.

Google led me to a Social Network for Q&A called Yahoo Answers. This site facilitates a dialogue between people who have a problem and people who have the solution (to that problem). There are categories like Arts & Humanities, Computers & Internet, Environment, Pets, Politics & Government to name a few. And I was lucky enough to find how to kill the virus.

Sometimes if I don’t find the solution to a problem here, other tech-forums like annoyances.org, techrepublic.com, experts-exchange.com (not free) work the same way. But they are too boring to look at (websites of 1.0?).

Personal Blogs

Another way I use is to read blogs of geek gods. They are gracious enough to write about the ways in which you can remove the virus without calling the ‘hardware’ guy.

There are other sites that I find interesting for solving problems.

Tips Blog

Dumb Little Man (Personal, Money, Business related)

Video How-To’s

Foodtube (Cooking)

Instructables (Home Improvement)

I also try the good old YouTube. One might think that most videos there are harmless fun. But rummaging there, I found some pretty interesting things to satisfy my big/small curiosities. People have uploaded videos of video game walkthroughs (if you are stuck at a difficult level and want to know how to beat it), magic tricks (adding more content here)

Google acts as an interface for these Q&A social networks, forums and blogs. So, one does not have to go to each website to look for a solution. But it helps to know the site names to identify which ones would be most useful when they come up in Google search results.

Personal Learning Environments

I am currently exploring a concept called Personal Learning Environments. Interestingly, I ran into the idea while making a presentation titled ‘Learner 2.0’. I was trying to look at web 2.0 tools and was trying to convince my audience about web 2.0 tools being most suitable for the current day digital learner who is connected to a network of people at all points in time, via a mobile phone or a PC. I focused on ideas like collaboration, sharing, publishing, and multitasking, which are second nature to the our learner. Web 2.0 tools, which rest on a similar philosophy, are therefore the most natural web tools to be used for the current day learner.

All was well until I stumbled upon Graham Attwell’s paper which speaks about Personal Learning Environments. Attwell is rather critical about institutions trying to control internet based learning through Learning Management Systems and Virtual Learning Environments. He points out that merely reproducing class room learning using these tools, makes these environments sterile. It is important that we allow learners to play an active role in deciding what they must learn and how. And such a move will give way for a Personal Learning Environment, which is usually an aggregation of several desktop and web services. More importantly, we must recognise such infromal learning as a mark of the learner’s competencies, therefore look beyond qualifications that come with formal learning.

Although Attwell does not speak of developing Personal Learning Environments to the exclusion of more formal learning spaces, I couldn’t help but reflect on the changing role of educators/ learning solution providers such as myself. Also, if we were to recognize informal learning, measure it in some sense, aren’t we formalising it? But these questions apart, I do think that educators and trainers must create an awareness about the possibilities that new technologies can provide. Learners can certainly choose their tools but exposing them to these tools will certainly be a part of our changing role.

I think one way to do this is by collecting and sharing Good Case Practices of companies and educational institutions across the globe using a variety of tool sets to enhance informal learning amongst their employees and students. Over the next few weeks, I am going to be posting about such instances. If you know of any good case practices or have interesting opinions about the ones I post, please feel free to share them.

For a more clear and simple introduction to Personal Learning Environments, watch this video made by Graham Attwell.

You could also watch this interview of Graham Attwell to get his views on using new technologies for learning, the reactions of educational institutions to these, and the use of these technologies for workplace learning.