Ho hum...

Steve Wheeler's lecture was interesting but I found myself wondering why  his finishing statements seemed a bit obvious....

As an informal educator, this is where I have always started from with young people. The idea of a more equal starting point where the educator doesn't need to be the subject expert. My previous blog post posed a question from the lecture about whether peer learning challenges Vygotsky's idea of the educator supporting the learner in that 'zone of proximal development', and a colleague rightly responded with the comment that it does not need to be the 'knowing other' who provides that support, it can be anyone - they just need to listen and ask the right questions. The informal educator is very often in this position and will also facilitate a learner's peers to contribute to the overall learning.

So, if this is part of the pedagogy of the  informal educator, why do I still encounter youth workers who discount the significance of social media in young people's lives or discount the need for them to support young people in their acquisition of digital literacy or fluency skills?

The concepts of paragogy as a theory of peer learning, and then heutagogy as a theory of self-directed learning,  link very well with the pedagogy informal education, experiential education and the concepts of product, process and praxis. I'm not sure about the simplistic nature of the model below however. I don't think that peer learning is necessarily formal, it certainly isn't when in the learner's own time or when unexpected outcomes are achieved, for example, a rise in self-confidence through being involved in a set task such as presentation.

We also ask learners to blog in formal settings, sometimes even setting assessment criteria and guidance on what to blog, and my hunch is that this doesn't always work because it tries to mix pedagogy with heutagogy and doesn't take into account how the learner's wants and needs. Steve Wheeler is quite critical of learning styles, yet it seems to be that blogging as a form of reflective practice seems to suit some people but not others.

Enhancing and extending learning through technology: social media in education

In a seminar being run by Prof Steve Wheeler which is posing some interesting questions re blogging, collaboration and sharing ."In the act of writing ...we are written" (Chandler). Perhaps a reason why people don't or won't blog? There's a risk to putting it out there.. what might others think about what you've written? I'm even going back through this and correcting the punctuation...

Front stage and backstage roles - what persona do you present to your 'readers'? I certainly engage online 'in awareness' but that involves a level of digital fluency or literacy that perhaps young people haven't developed.

Lessig- "Blogging ..is the most important form of unchoreographed public discourse that we have" - it allows us to put our thoughts out there. It's not always unchoreographed though because in HE we often instruct students to blog or reflect on specific things. Perhaps this doesn't work sometimes because it's forced in some way?

Paragogy: peer support is  becoming an emergent property in HE - how does this challenge Vygotsky's ZPD and the role of knowledgeable others? Collaboration and sharing online enables peer and individual support in ways that haven't been seen before. However, what happens when it's not supportive and becomes destructive or oppressive?