Miscellaneous Amateurs
A presentation by Wilma Clark
Damn the Amateurs or embrace the Miscellaneous?
The Keen / Weinberger Dichotomy
The Four Dimensions of the Debate
Keen - Authority and Canon; Weinberger - Expertise and Process
The Role of the Teacher
Authority, Audience and Agency
Creating our own Knowledge
A vessel to be filled or a fire to be kindled?
Some Examples
Learner, Teacher, Community
Joe Dale: Integrating ICT into the MFL Classroom (Languages Teacher at Nodehill School on the Isle of Wight and SSAT Lead Practitioner) - using blogs, podcasting, etc. in the classroom.
Chris Fuller: Facing the currently unknown and Edgehill Spanish Blog (Spanish Teacher at Edgehill College in Devon) - using blogs, podcasts, mobile phones, etc. in the classroom.
Sharon Tonner: TechnoTeacher (Teacher at Dundee High School), Voices of the World Wiki and Community - using blogs, wikis, video, mobiles, allsorts, in the classroom.
Classroom 2.0: a social networking site for teachers, educators, etc. interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education.
Open and Closed Systems
Institution, Trust and the Learner
The LGC "Open Context" Model
Strategies for understanding and developing LGCs
Conclusion
-
digital ‘knowledge’ is messy
-
learners need guidance
- a navigable ecosystem is needed
References:
(2007) Weinberger, D. Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder"
(2007) Keen, A. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting our Economy
(2007) Fora TV, Weinberger, D. and Keen, A., Debate: The Value of Authority in a Connected World, available online at: http://fora.tv/2007/07/27/David_Weinberger_and_Andrew_Keen
Debate
- Technologies generate more technologies!
- Keen vs Weinberger - how do we deal with the fragmentation of knowledge?
- Is a learner-generated context one in which the teacher sets up the framework? It is if the learners are set up on the debate on whether this is knowledge - more of a discovery model than a curriculum model.
- LGC: greater freedom in learning strategies? Greater degree of learner-relevance? Greater degree of access to web 2.0 learning resources?
- Comment: "...it's a matter of authority and risk"
- Comment: "...people don't trust kids - teach them how to enjoy and learn - trust them"
- Comment: "...learning needs a climate of trust, an openness to innovation, teachers need to be seen to be learners and learners need to be seen to be teachers"
- Contrast between knowledge that is deemed authoritative and knowledge that is evolving and emerging
- We need a greater dialectic between both types of knowledge - two sides of the same coin
- See the PAH continuum
- See the Obuchenie context model
- Teacher is a word that belongs to the formal context but obuchenie implies that the teacher is always a learner too, opening up learning to broader interpretations
- We need to embrace the notion of "messy success"