New Technology Supporting Informal Learning by Stephen Downes

Please take a moment to review this pertinent paper from Stephen Downes - Half an Hour blog, in preparation for the Challenges 2009 conference in Braga, Portugal.

We often talk about games, simulations and other events in learning, but these technologies support only episodic learning. Equally important are those technologies that provide a context for these learning episodes, an environment where students and interact and converse among themselves.
This paper described experimentation in the development of distributed online courses and in software - particularly, the personal learning environment - that support the formation of connections between the far-flung pieces of such courses. This work, in turn, is suggesting and supporting the model of learning described in the first section, that of a course network supporting and informing an ever-shifting set of course episodes, continues Stephen Downes - Half an Hour blog.

Enjoy reading this paper!