Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

In his latest post, Ewan takes the cudgel to Local Authorities that have banned social networking citing a call by Carol Rozwell, a Gartner vice president, at their recent symposium for corporates to loosen up on social networks in the workplace. In it he feels embarrassed that most education authorities continue to be “ignorant of the possibilities” despite both the example and innovation of groundbreaking work he was a part of. I feel for him, like many innovations in education, putting change at the forefront of education practice has always been difficult and is the scourge of our profession.

Carol Rozwell’s premise, that, “humans are social creatures and that there’s more to employee relations than a paycheck for work performed“, is not a new one, and can be more easily applied to education. After all, few learners have the incentive of payment for learning let alone in compulsory education systems. Together with such incentives as deferred gratification, the joy of learning, and success, social interaction is not only a basic motivating factor to learn (and I could argue that these incentives are but sub-sets of this), but also the way in which humans have always learnt. As Miles recently pointed out, “the most highly valued learning still occurs as social experiences“. So I simply ask the question whether or not there is a real choice with regard to our use of technology in schools? Shouldn’t we be developing a social learning strategy?

Take for example the use of Learning Platforms and VLEs. Some might argue that these are best used as delivery systems for content, knowledge and even the expertise of the teacher. But evidence is already emerging that where these systems support learning effectively is when they are used in a social learning context. Indeed, this can bring about rapid changes in the culture of learning in the institution that we begin to talk about the ‘transformation’ word.

Image credit: Jay Cross from Ross Dawson

Tags: sociallearning