Using Web 2.0 (and Web 3.0) tools to support Recognition of Prior Learning.

On Friday the 9 March I attended a workshop that focused on the ways in which recognition of existing skills of learners could accelerate their progression to a qualification. Accelerating learners achievement of qualifications is seen as one way of addressing the skills shortage in NSW and Australia.

I had always viewed Web 2.0 tools as a vehicle for engagement, relevance and a new paradigm of learning, but the capacity to capture and store user generated content for the purpose of recognition of skills is also apparent.

Using Web 2.0 tools to support recognition processes is certainly a higher strategic priority in VTE in NSW than shifting the educational paradigm to embrace connectivism.

Practically, Web 2.0 has lots of applications for collecting and storing evidence for RPL. I haven't researched the current uses of Web 2.0 in RPL but it is clear that there is a place for challenge tests on wikis, and reflections and videos of student work on blogs, or even moblogs for the purpose of evidence of achievement of skills. Add Web 3.0 and 3D worlds like Second Life and it just gets sexier!

I wanted to be in Adelaide............

Do you remember the show called "Romper Room"? Through the magic mirror the hostess would call out all the names of the children she could "see" in the magic mirror. It was like that at the recent TALO Adelaide swap meet - via webconferencing I could see Leigh and Alex and Bill and Graeme and Robyn and Stephan. But it was like looking through the bubble or talking through ectoplasm.

Robyn Jay sensitively and expertly stepped in as a channel between worlds, and it would have taken the energy that a psychic medium would use to communicate from the "other side".

The conversations were interesting and I wish I was there (especially for the alleged drinking that happened later!). I did learn some things about web-conferencing so that my learners will never have to feel like their noses are pressed up against a window but they can't get in.

Dark Side of the Blog

Purity, Passion,Politics and Regurgitation

On the bright side of blogging we have the purity and passion of knowledge workers, researching, investigating,creating and evolving knolwedge into a higher truth. A purity of intention and passsion for knowledge is at work.

The dark side of the blogoshere are the profile building politics and regurgitation of information without critique. I am not throwing stones here, it is more that I am reflecting from a position of standing right in the middle of the glass house. I
acknowledge this has been part of my practice.

Participate, contribute, learn is the name of my blog and this is one point of learning from my own participation and contribution.