Summary: Learning to learn, aka metalearning or deuterolearning, is an important and still unusual intentionally chosen product of teaching endeavors. To so set a learning situation such that metalearning is highly likely and at the same time occurs in an evolving fashion based on each person's unique series of works (weblog entries on a personal website) ?? To facilitate and document this over the course of a lifetime of work? WOW!! This is what George Siemens is talking about in a recent entry.
Coincidentally, I just finished watching an interview in which an only-child actress admitted a considerable fogginess to her understanding of who/what she was before she was twelve. She went on to observe that in the absence of siblings and abiding friendships [her family moved frequently] --- and therefore in the absence of telling and retelling stories on and about each other-- one loses the chance to form and retain memories --memories, I would add, that are part of an evolving theory of self-in-life. The ability to systematically add to or alter life-view via interaction with personal artifacts (in her case remembered, because retold and abstracted many times in the conversations) is undermined without the individual and collectived artifacts to reinterpret.
In the entry below George Siemens excitedly ponders the consequences of having many artifacts to use in the constrant reconstruction of life view/life strategy as our lives play out and as our string of conscious leavings afford interpretation. (Until now, or so it now seems to me, only the biographers and students of the highly published had such material to work with.) However, now that we have the prospect of what George calls the A "Lifetime Personal Web Space" the reconstruction experience is available to a larger fraction of humanity.
A major aspect of this personal webspace is the presence of permanent tracings of self-understanding, self-questioning, world pondering, and life strategies as they are visited and revisited in the weblog.
Lifetime Personal Webspace: (Via Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom: Weblog Theory.)(via George Siemens)
Now I know I'm kinda strange, but the premise of this article from Educause seriously gives me chills:What do we wish for? That every citizen, at birth, will be granted a cradle-to-grave, lifetime personal Web space that will enable connections among personal, educational, social, and business systems.
Ok, now I know that's a lot to wrap your brain around, especially on a Friday afternoon. But if you are at all interested in the potential of the read/write Web and what it might evolve into, I think this is must reading. The paradigm shift is staggering, and the pedagogical foundation its build on is still pretty rickety, but think about some of this, for starters:The LPWS will store searchable content (personal, educational,social, business) that was important in a user’s past and make it accessible for future use, as well as current projects. Since technology changes over time, the older sections of the Web space (for example, K-12 grade content) might be technologically less sophisticated, but would connect nonetheless to newer additions (such as postgraduate work activities).The primary user would decide whether a cell is private or public (potentially functioning as an e-portfolio or Web site) and who will be permitted to enter various parts of the structure. Some cells may be off-limits (even invisible) to all but the primary user. Moreover, the user will decide which cells connect to others and which do not. As the user matures, an analysis of the types and numbers of connections might assist in setting goals and strategies for subsequent personal and professional development.
Um, whoa. I seriously want one of these. And the benefits:Few students maintain ready access to both the content and products from their K-12 years. College students typically sell their books and lose access to their collegiate course management Web sites. While an e-portfolio provides ready access to selected work products, intent and effort are required to transport content between separate, often incompatible systems. The LPWS construct will enable users to preserve more knowledge over time and to forge richer connections between their academic and work endeavors.
Read the scenario that's included. In fact, read the whole thing. What a concept.I think the reason this idea connects so strongly for me is because of what I've been mentioning recently about this being a learning log, and probably the most educational experience of my life. It's really wild when I think about it. For me, blogging just clicked; maybe I had the gene, or maybe it was because I always wanted to write, or that I'm an info junkie or a hundred other reasons. But I have sampled the Kool-Aid, and I really do believe. In some really strange way (remember, I am sorta out there...) it's like my recorded life began three years ago, and I really wish I had a more historical archive. Should have started earlier.
Anyway, this is what the read/write Web makes possible for us and for our students. We just have to grab it."
