The digitally literate learner and the appropriation of new technologies and media for education

Here are the slides from John Cook's well-attended inaugural lecture at London Metropolitan University this evening. John's talk - you get quite a clear grasp of it from the slides - was a nice mix of the personal, the practical, and the theoretical; and in listening to it you got the sense that John has been thoughtfully "plugging away" on learning technology research that is making a real difference to learners from non-traditional backgrounds. (John is based at London Metropolitan University, which is said to have more black and ethnic minority students than the whole of the UK's "Russell Group" of elite research led universities.)

John's argument (this is written live, and is bound to be doing him disservice)  is roughly as follows:

• connected mobile devices are everywhere;
• young people in the developed world are digitally literate;
• they spend several hours per day on the Net (often using a spectrum of devices rather than just one);
• their digital literacy enables them to communicate and manipulate (images, data, etc) in ways that really are  new and different;
• informal learning is endemic, and for many is more important in its overall impact than formal learning;
• context/location aware mobile devices provide a powerful way to enhance learning;
• the learning environment is the loosely coupled set of tools, services, and information resources that learners choose to access, rather than the institution's VLE.

Comments

[Donald Clark]

I love this man.