Creating your own learning environment - the video

Recently I ran a workshop at a London college to help staff develop ideas on using social media tools to create personal learning environments for students. The aim is to help students explore, discuss, remix what they find online - rather than just receive content developed by teachers. The session worked pretty well, thanks to the creativity of the staff, sparked by ideas I provided on cards. Full report including the game here, and download a pdf of my presentation and game.
I've now found a terrific video by online learning specialist Stephen Downes which brings the use of social media - or Web 2.0 - to life.
In Web 2.0 and Your Own Learning and Development George Siemens puts it like this:

Stephen Downes has posted a nice introduction on how to create your own learning network using simple social tools - valuable for even the most basic technically-skilled:  Web 2.0 and Your Own Learning and Development (including guerrilla tactics for interaction, usability - if it's not provided by the forum, instructor, or conference organizers, create your own via blogs, instant messaging, etc.). Basic message: don't wait for others to do it for you - get active in forming your own learning and your own learning networks. The format - powerpoint with web cam, audio, and images (happily blended with iMovie, I imagine) is a proof of concept. With the most basic software, and a bit of technical skill, presentations online can be much more appealing. My only criticism - need a podcast feed. I took the 20 minutes to view the presentation, but would have appreciated the ability to listen on my drive in to work...a download option is available, but only for video iPod...which I've found to be a challenge watching while driving :). Which reminds me...I'm still waiting for Articulate to enable audio file export...

I'll pass the video link on to the college, and (with some trepidation) the game on to Stephen. Howard Rheingold has also expressed interest (see his comment here):

I've followed your blog for quite a while, and was interested in this post in particular because I'm interested in how to take advantage of the interest in participatory media on the part of digital natives to redesign pedagogy in college classrooms. Lecturing goes back 1000 years to the days when hand-written books were chained to lecterns. Now, with wi-fi in the classroom and students who IM, SMS, use social network services, blog, etc., what methods can we use to effectively bring together teachers, learners, knowledge, and classrooms? In that regard, your game seemed to be a start.
Here are a few things I am doing:
https://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy
http://rheingold2.jot.com/Syllabus
http://howardrheingold.blip.tv

... so maybe there's some joining up to be done if I can interest a major player over here. Maybe Channel 4 Education, who recently ran the In the Wild event with Policy Unplugged would host a get-together.

Comments

[Alex]

David

Was speaking with someone you know today, Ed Mitchell who showed me some of what he has done with CILIP and CIPD on knowledge sharing.
He said you were looking together at something for the Arts Council, I would be happy to help with any feedback on knowledge sharing tools as I have been looking at one or two recently.

Regards

Alex