Informal learning & e-learning

In this folder we gathered various documents related to informal learning. This "category" refers to all kinds of learning activites that differ from standard residential class-based learning (in "ordinary" schools"). Informal learning can refer to visits, meetings and all kind of relationships with "knowledge", "know-how" and "knowledgeable" people. When applied to "e-learning", "informal" activities refer to interacting over the Net with blogs, Wikipedia and all kinds of interactive services contributors. You might be interested in "informal" ways of teaching and learning. This is the main interest we develop in chapter "Informal". Please, click on "Informal" in the left column to participate in our re-thinking of "informal distance learning". Some ideas to start with: When using Google or any other search engine we enter a learning process that can start with an instant Q/A process and end up with the reading of a Wikipedia article where we are invited to contribute so that we add our special expertise to the others'. When our search for info overflows the usual course of events and becomes a comprehensive collective contribution to reality's description, we enter a sophisticated learning process. It's not any more a matter of matching a word with its translation or its meaning. It's about the perception of a reality by one reader, then another one and another one, again. It's a series of actions starting with a word definition, then a search for the ethmology of this word, then an audio or visual illustration of the concept; this sensible experience of the concept can be completed with an attempt to give a wider approach of the reality by sharing my experience with others'. When using forums to obtain answers to our questions, we not only ask for a match. We ask other persons to share their experience of a reality with us. Because we can rate very differently various contributions we are invited in most forums to rate contributions and contributors. That way, we learn from others then rate these occasional teachers. Informal learning is what we experiment while watching a movie when a heroe will tell a story or give a scientific piece of information to some other character. The movie is not a course about anything but we learn and fix in our memories the little story or the figures because we are in a pecular moment or "farniente" and we feel very "open-minded" without any volunteer attitude for that. Informal distance learning can be experienced when we enter a group of students, a community of people who share their time, desires, objectives, around a multimedia distance learning system such as Pleiad (for CNAM students). Because we share some months in the life of other people involved in a strategic process of social change “informal learning meets eLearning” a web seminar by Adobe about COLDFUSION software (?) Informal learning is all what we catch with our senses (sens), grasp with our brain, fix into our cells for one day or one life. All that without any positive decision to enter a learning process. Informal elearning is all what we catch from our surfing sessions without having planned it. For instance, we are looking for an hotel room for a week-end in New-York. While in the process of visiting virtually the hotels, we learn about the museums we can visit, near by. We discover there is a special exhibition about Picasso; then we learn something about Picasso. Informal eLearning can be considered either as a passive process where we just click on words and images to get new informations or audio-visual events. It can also be considered as a positive/active process (a web 2.0 process) where we, as surfers, are invited to participate in the building of the information or to contribute to the experience. Informal learning is perhaps the most dynamic and versatile aspect of learning. Unfortunately, it is also the least recognized. Informal learning is a by-product of “information foraging” – “the human behaviour when searching for information was similar to that of the hunter-gatherers and animals in search for food” ( Dürsteler, undated). Our need for information (and how we intend to use it) drives our search. Search engines (like Google) coupled with information storage tools, and repositories, and personal knowledge management tools like wikis and blogs present a powerful toolset in the knowledge workers portfolio. Jay Cross (2003): states that: “At work we learn more in the break room than in the classroom. We discover how to do our jobs through informal learning observing others, asking the person in the next cubicle, calling the help desk, trial-and-error, and simply working with people in the know. Formal learning - classes and workshops and online events - is the source of only 10% to 20% of what we learn at work.” What makes Wikipedia so popular is not only the variety of informations but the ability anybody owns to contribute to the content. This contribution process makes us feel part of the information, itself. In fact, the information is dependant on the mood, the culture, the expertise we demonstrate at the special moment when we decide to write this contribution. What makes Internet elearning so magic is that because of the number of readers of Wikipedia, any mistake of misbehaviour by any contributor will be erased by the next one. The great numbers law will play an important role, stating that truth will always appear and that lies or bad conducts will be corrected. The fact to become part of this information will add to the process of memorization. We will better fix in our cells what we wrote that what we only read. When this Wikipedia contribution process ends up, you can start a dialog by entering a blog or any kind of forum participation. You will, then, start a person to person dialog. You will transform the information in a part of your personal relation to life. Our experience with “informal collective elearning” showed that students learn a lot more from their narrative description of everyday life or personal problems to other students than from simple reading of text blocks related to a theory. In fact, we discovered that you must provide students with two ways of learning. A You give a block of information to read/learn/view, as a reference B You provide communication tools so that students can exchange experiences about their personal vision, understanding of this block of information When they read, first, the information, they get bored very fast and don’t even pay any attention to the potential links between this information and their personal case. When they are asked by others to tell their own story, to say with their own words what is their fundamental understanding of the theory, then they suddenly discover the hidden links between theory and “real life”. Eric Delalonde