Here is a good example of informal learning: A man used YouTube to learn how to deliver his son when his wife went into labour prematurely. The learning was situated, meaningful and oh-so-real!

If you asked me what the not-too-distant future of learning might look like, I’d say it will comprise a better balance of formal and informal learning.

New pedagogies will take advantage of the way people learn now learn in “information fragments”, e.g., open source style.

For assessment, I hope that e-portfolios become more common for teaching, learning, and evaluation. I strongly believe in this approach and so much that I require my trainees to maintain electronic versions of their practicum files. These files are not exactly e-portfolios yet, but they are a start!

Many thanks to Carolyn, one of my Web 2.0 collaborators, for pointing the articles out to me.

In his blog entry, Anastasia Vesperman (Feldspar Epstein in SL) responded to the same questions that Karl Kapp answered about educational Second Life (SL).

In essence, he reiterated how educators have only just started exploring the possible educational affordances of SL. We don’t really know what is effective and we are still finding out.

However, the study in 2007 cited by both Kapp and Epstein discovered that learners used social networking tools (SL among them) for educational purposes ON THEIR OWN rather than being told to do so as part of schoolwork. It’s informal learning in action!

I like Epstein’s suggestion on one way we might get more discover the educational uses of SL. He ended his entry with:

If students are let somewhat looser in digital fields than they [the teachers] have been, it would be interesting to gather information on how the students leverage these technologies to further their own education — students make great teachers and leaders.

This video is entitled, The Miniature Earth. Watch this and you might learn something. Each person will probably take home a different message.

For me, it is the concept of multimedia literacy and the power of collaboration. Why?

Imagine having to read the same statistics in a newspaper or a report or a textbook. Then imagine just looking at the images alone. Now imagine listening to just the music for pleasure.

But when you put them together thoughtfully and skilfully, the end result is greater than just the sum of the parts. It’s a perfect example of “1+1=3″.

The type of literacies that our children and our students need has already started evolving from traditional literacies (basic reading and writing) to things like games and media production. These not only appeal to the digital natives, these are their language and culture.

Are you planning on teaching them the way you are comfortable or they way they learn best?

Note: Original version of the video is at http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm. This YouTube video is one of several different versions that have different soundtracks. [Lyrics] [MP3 Stream]