The Learning Project at St Mary’s

On my way home on the train, Tuesday, I was listening to an interview with James Farmer, founder of edublogs.org which you can hear here (herehere!)Download Interview.

The interview is not particularly earth moving, but what I really loved is being able to put a name and a voice to an innovation that is so obviously designed for me as a teacher and for my students.  Farmer speaks about meeting a need in a way that made sense and was convenient.  Based in Melbourne, Farmer’s edublogs.org hosts over 100 000 teacher blogs and may more student blogs.

Some of the new features include tools to manage classes and free (and ad-free) Wiki’s at Wikispaces.

He challenges us to let go a little bit and see what uses students can put a blog to.

One the same topic, Lynn P sent me a link to 5 good reasons for students to blog. Check them out.

Perhaps we have just accepted as legitimate the old semiotics of learning such as economic language (outcomes, products) or industrial langauge (control and discipline). I like the idea of the ecology of learning (Elliott and Piatek 2007), or more usefully, the semiotics of connection.  Considering what the world needs of our learners, it is becoming apparent that the most successful, adaptive and resilient learners are one who can create connections bewteen knowledge and skills, who can operate within and capitalise on networks of all types.  This semiotic of connection may look like this:  (Thanks to mindmeister for the mind map software)

Click the mind map to consider how this semiotic relates to your understanding of the way people learn.