Learning Conversations

I'm really looking forward to the Future of Education conference.

George Siemens and the University of Manitoba team run brilliant online conferences. They know the importance of keeping people regularly informed of what's going on and the key places to look. Every day an email comes from George picking out the interesting conversations. These, the emails from the discussion forums, and the RSS feeds from people blogging, keep the buzz going. From all sides participants are encouraged to engage with the ongoing dialogue.

Most conferences are centred on the presentations. The conversations around the edges, although they're usually seen to be the most important part of the conference, are seen as peripheral by the organisers. In these online conferences, the conversations are at the centre. They are the main learning occasions - and treated as such by the organisers. The presentations are just the sparks for those conversations.

Already the conference has been a learning experience for me. Even before I've really engaged with anyone else! In the Introductions thread, I put in writing something that has been part of my thinking for quite a while. I was thinking about what I dream about in education/learning:

"My dream is to be able to put into practice a holistic view of learning, that is not driven (and therefore constrained) by top-down, arbitrary and simplistic targets. It will be a world where the distinction between teacher and learner is blurred, and where the walls of the classroom are not a barrier for learning."

That encapsulates most of what I believe about learning (at the moment...) It's necessarily quite vague and general. But hopefully will be useful enough to provide a heuristic against which I can measure how things are going.