Where Learning Happens
Monsters with teeth by Cubby CC-BY-NC-SA
Hybrid Pedagogy‘s week-long #MOOCMOOC (a MOOC about MOOCS — Massive Open Online Courses) is finishing today. The organizers provided a plan for each day, which included readings, other resources and suggested activities. They also created a handy dashboard where we could see the stream of announcements, Twitter messages and blog posts. I contributed to a collaborative 1,000 word Google doc (“A MOOC by Any Other Name“) with 52 others, and I participated in the Twitter discussion by following the #MOOCMOOC hashtag. On Tuesday, we were asked to create a short video that responded to the question: “Where does learning happen?”. I started by writing down some thoughts, but I didn’t manage to finish a video. In the end, I thought the words (pasted below) were enough. It will take me a while to wade through the many twitter messages, blog posts and other online documents that resulted from the MOOC MOOC. Already, participants are collating and curating their thoughts and the work of others who this course enabled them to connect to. A summary of MOOCMOOC stories has already been posted. I’m looking forward to my next MOOC, which will likely be #CFHE12 (Current/Future State of Higher Education). This course will run from October 8 to November 18. Like the best (Connectivist) MOOCs, it will be Open, and it will attract open-minded people.
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Where Learning Happens
It can happen out in public places
alleyways and funny spaces
underneath and in between
locations where you’ve never been
before.
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It can happen on an airplane
at 30,000 feet above the ground
you’ve found the person sitting
next to you has lived the life you
might have.
.
It can happen walking down the street
you meet someone you haven’t seen
in ages who tells you
everything
before the light changes.
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It can happen in mid sentence when
you interrupt the program for
a message
from one sponsor
or another.
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It can happen at a party
once I met a guy who told me how
sub atomic particles romance
with partners rooms away
that made my day.
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It can happen in a pub
an angel at the bar sharing whisky
while a stranger tells
a history of the world
in six glasses.
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It can happen when you go to bed
and in your head you find
an alleyway at 30,000 feet
where faster than light neutrinos are
dancing the night away.
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And it all makes sense.
Yes, yes and yes!
It’s scary how much it’s overlooked that learning does NOT happen in the classroom or training room. The other aspect that’s also pushed back into the background is that it’s not a passive process. It’s not enough just to be present.
Isn’t it strange that learning is what we do when we’re not sitting passively in a classroom or lecture theatre?