Outright silliness

by Janet Clarey on October 11, 2009

Robert Bacal thinks the terms ‘informal learning’ and ‘e-learning 2.0′ are “silly terms to take things we’ve been talking about (or discarded) years ago, and repackage them with fancier terms.” “We”, if I understand Robert correctly, are people (like Robert) who are not ignorant and not intellectually impoverished. “Long term experts on learning.” So if you’ve ever uttered ‘e-learning 2.0′ or ‘informal learning’, you’re ignorant and impoverished and conning everyone. He says:

“We”, as supposed professionals have an obligation, an ethical obligation to know our field, and not to create bogus new terms so we can make money by way of conning consumers. And even more important, educators, tasked with the future of our children, should, well, be educated about learning.

The sad part is we are starting to put the futures of our children (and adult learners) into the hands of people who can’t reason their way out of a paper bag, and the scary part is that limited resources may end up being allocated to completely stupid approaches to create learning in others.

It sure would be nice if some more “long term experts on learning” who think “2.0″ is all rubbish would put their work, their background in learning theory and their “hard-core research” out in the public for comment. It’s not that hard really. The publish button is just over there to the right.

baal(You can download a free whitepaper Informal Learning: Extending the Impact of Enterprise Ideas and Information (a conversation with Jay Cross) from Robert’s website. You have to opt in to receive future email though because it’s a pay-per-lead item. Yes, he gets paid $1.50. For a paper. About Informal Learning. Gotta love irony.)

Update and hat tip to my tweeps: the article is free here .

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  • subquark
    hmm, he may be correct. Why use new terms? I say we go back to Latin - it has been dead long enough. =p

    The beauty of communication is that we can shape and define, in fact refine, our messages. It would be a very sad world indeed if we stopped the wonderful life that laguages have.

    However, I seem to have been ripped off from the "making money" part of using the term Web2.0. Well, I think I will go back to Fax1.0 . . .

    *pitches pc and pda and looks for a quill*
  • Bacal's comments beneath his post have become even more crass and insulting. I couldn't help but contribute, and also to point a few others to his stupidity by means of a post on my own blog.
  • Brian
    I've heard of Web 2.0. (Mixing media types and software to extend capabilities beyond pure hyper-text/mark-up presentations)

    I've heard of informal learning. - (Learning that is more self guided and not 'formally assessed'.)

    Until today I've yet to hear the term "e-learning 2.0". Been out of the loop for a while!

    Is this supposed to mean courses/instruction delivered via technologies that use mixed media/software clients, and multiple information sources/servers?

    Or does it mean learning that takes place through computers and other devices?
  • Hi Brian -
    Thanks for your comment.

    In a report I wrote about e-learning 2.0 (strategy and implementation) I defined e-learning 2.0 as a new way of thinking about e-learning inspired by the
    emergence of Web 2.0. E-learning 2.0 places increased emphasis on social learning and use of social media. and assumes that knowledge is socially constructed (in my opinion) within complex online communities of practice. Stephen Downes, at the Canadian Research Center, further expanded the definition by describing the shift, brought on by Web 2.0, from medium to platform “in which content is shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along.”(see http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articl...) The content of e-learning 2.0 is used, not consumed (e-learning "1.0"), and is personalized and aggregated by the learner. The tools that power this type of learning are most frequently (and currently) referred to as 'social media.' Communities, blogs, wikis, microblogs, shared tagging/bookmarking, social networks, etc.are some tools used. I think E-learning 2.0 also involves a change in pedagogy (change from instructor to facilitator/community manager). I guess I should underscore this by saying e-learning 2.0 does not replace e-learning 1.0 or classroom-based instructor-led training but provides additional channels for solving performance problems. Hope that helps.
  • Brian
    Excellent!

    This is broad scope stuff indeed....much more 'real world'. And in the years to come information pools will be even more of a 'social construct' than they already are.

    I think it's great that there are a growing number of researchers looking at learning beyond the scope of 'controlled' instructional variables. I.E. In the class-room.

    I personally don't see a problem with giving things names, or even version numbers as that frames an ongoing discussion that is sure to follow.

    One 'idea' might be to loose the version number concept and adopt descriptive words rather than numbers? It might ease the minds of those that think these are all just 'marketing' words. I.E. Pushed E-learning or Computer Based Training (1.0), and Social Constructivist E-Learning (2.0)

    It seems to me that this guy just hasn't attened a convention before where these 'concepts' are discussed. I have, and not once did anyone try to 'sell stuff' to me.

    Brian
  • You're exactly right that we name things to frame ongoing discussion. And, they keep changing. I think "2.0" was just an easy way to understand e-learning in terms of the evolution of web in general. Great to have you joining the discussion.
  • I’ll admit that I know very little about Mr. Bacal, but from reading his article, there seems to be little understanding of community. The power of social media is that it breaks down the barriers of delivering relevant, highly valuable content to a target audiences. This has a profound impact on learning, it doesn't simply repackage it. SMEs now have the tools to leverage their expertise to provide great training content, spark conversation and engage learners in way we've never seen before. Now if we really have a set of intellectually impoverished cons who can't reason their way out of a paper bag, the power of the community will weed them out quickly, as it will even some "recognized, long term experts on learning" I am afraid.
  • Hi Dawn -
    Excellent observation about community, engagement, and the identification of expertise within a community (vs. self-described or by title/hierarchy). The 'repacked' comment reminds me of the marketing side of social media where companies slap a Twitter icon on their page and expect results without doing anything differently (old broadcast model). They don't get it. I'm afraid there's many more in our field.
  • Dawon heah in Suthern Carolinah we-uns are pretty informal 'bout everything we do. Larnin', drivin', eatin' and electin' our representatives. (See also Wilson, Joe; Sanford, Mark, et. al.)

    It could be that's the cauze of our low higah skool graddiation rate, I suspose. Mebbe we needs to formalise that larnin' some.

    Ima puttin' Junior ina a clean NASCAR t-shirt afore he heads to skool next week f'shure.
  • You're killing me here Dick. But didn't you forgot pulled pork or something?
    (I'm actually laughing in my office right now *all by myself.* Kind of scary but thanks.
  • If I didn't make up new terms to sell to my customers, I'd have nothing at all. I'm working on "psychic learning" right now.
  • I'm always amused by the Presumptive We; while it's funnier in person, it's far easier to use online.

    I do find it amusing, coming from someone whose last 100 or so tweets include at least 27 linking to stuff on his own sites, plus 14 linking to comments on that stuff (including comments from him), plus 5 retweets of...his tweets about his stuff.

    I don't want to pontificate on ethical obligations. I will say that out of simple courtesy, I myself would have avoided habitually using "trdev" as a hashtag--especially in what seems a transparent effort to lay claim to its use. TRDEV was once shorthand for the TRDEV-L listserv begun by Penn State's David Passmore. TRDEV later became the name of a Yahoo group formed when Passmore discontinued the original list.

    Similarly, out of courtesy, I would have avoided using trdev as a Twitter ID, because I wouldn't want to mislead people into thinking that I had anything to do with the listerv (I didn't, except as a contributor over many years) or even the Yahoo group (where I was, briefly, one of the group coordinators). You can do your own analysis of what sites get linked to, and who gets retweeted by, @trdev.

    Yeah, yeah, there wasn't a trademark, the ID was available, no animals were harmed.
  • Social media manners. Or, just manners.
  • Hi Janet - *really* looking forward to reading this paper [rubs hands together in anticipation]!

    May I suggest that a great counter-information-harvesting technique is to
    1 - set up a freemail account so this kind of stuff so that your main mailbox isn't contacted
    2 - Give a fake name/company/industry/occupation (I like to say "Galactica Viper pilot" under the Other category at the moment, but ex-Beatle is good too)
    3 - set the postal address to something like "123 Fake Street"

    I also tend to give these folks Jim Rockford's (he of Rockford Files) phone number 555-2368.

    Best,
    Michael
  • Galactica Viper pilot. Oh, how I wish I had thought of something that clever. BTW..I updated my post to indicate the whitepaper is a conversation with Jay Cross (Bacal didn't write it...he just gets paid to promote something he doesn't believe in.)
  • daveferguson
    I know there's one grocery-chain "discount card" in the name of George Orwell. I understand he likes rutabaga. Also, turbinado sugar.

    If you think their system is smart enough to spot George (ha!), try Eric Blair, which was his real name.
  • : )
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