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Week 5 Activty 1 - Definition of Learning

Week 4
This week we were looking at the social dimensions of learning as another contiuum (individual-social) to look at alongside the AM and PM continuum. Not instead of.

A1. Defining Learning Summary
We were all asked to (without doing any research) define learning. My definition was

"Learning is the means or process by which people consciously and subconsciously acquire knowledge either formal or informally, consciously or subconsciously, individually or collaboratively, through experience or observation, trial and error, pushed by formal learning outcomes or pulled by personal desire.

The learning process results in changes to behaviour, feelings, opinions, abilities and often other peoples’ views of the individual who is showing a change as a result of their learning. The way that formal learning is applied/used will differ depending on the motivation to learn but the way that informal learning (ie learning from just being) may be applied subconsciously."

I found it really hard not to focus to much on the role of acquisition in learning , although I have used the term in the first paragraph showing that I feel that learning has 2-parts (at least) - the acqusition and then the results of that acquisition - ie how the learning is used, experimented with and then reformed. (IE the Kolb learning cycle must have influenced my definition).

Others included phrases such as:

Anthony's definition was short and sweet:
Learning:
the acquisition of facts or concepts;
individually or collectively;
intentionally or unconsciously;
which can be used either alone or in combination;
to create knowledge;
that satisfies a particular need;
cognitive or practical;
in either a personal or professional context. (Berry, A. (2009) H800 les6 09 W4 A1 3rd March 2009 09.35

Eddy suggested that this was too much focused on the Acquistion metaphor.

Anthony explains this further: "As a language teacher I am influenced by Krashen's differentiation between learning (instruction) and acquisition (learning by experience). I think that Krashen spoke about apprenticeship as acquisition - that combination of knowing and doing, which from a language perspective is evidenced by the 'professions' developing their own genres which either include or exclude depending on the level of eculturation". (Berry, A. (2009) H800 les6 09 W4 A1 6th March 2009 10.36)

Paul Kenney offered a very brief definition "Learning is to develop understanding of a task or discipline" (Kenny, P. (2009) H800 les6 09 W4 A1 1st March 2009 09/31) But others in the group questioned that understanding often comes before ability to do something, the example used was children learning to speak. They often understand what they hear but are unable to speak it themselves, in fact understanding comes before ability. (See Silver, K. 2nd March 2009, 22.55 and Stoermer, E. 2nd March 2009 16.12)

Mike introduced the idea of learning in isolation, some people questioned in terms of understanding it as learning from books - so it's not completely isolated as there is an author there too. In support of Mike's suggestion, examples were given of a naturalist exploring insects without any prior reasrach or information, another example given by Sharon was if you put your hand in a fire, you'll soon learn that it's hot without anyone/thing having to teach you this. But then the question of this being research and not learning arose. (See thread starting with Gilbert, M. (2009) 2nd March 2009, 17.22)

Roxine used the term "accumulative" to show that we are learning all the time, which also reflects the cyclical nature or process nature of learning that many of us identified. Beaumont-Sempill, R. (2009) H800 les6 09 W4 A1 3rd March 2009 11:36


Simon C offered this definition "So my definition would be: "Learning is the radiation of knowledge. Some are too thick skinned to be effected while others are illuminated." Cowan, S. (H800 les6 09 W4 A1 5th March 2009 20.50)


We were then instructed to look up some definitions of learning.

Sharon suggested these two, among others:
"This definition comes from the free online dictionary - http://www.thefreedictionary.com/learning

1. The act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skill.
2. Knowledge or skill gained through schooling or study. See Synonyms at knowledge.
3. Psychology Behavioral modification especially through experience or conditioning.
....

This third definition is taken from the Open University Open Learn site - http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=160207

Learning is an interactive process between people and their social and physical environment which results in changes to people's knowledge, attitudes and practices." Clark, S. (2009) H800 les6 09 W4 A1 3rd March 2009 08.24

As Simon A pointed out, and as I found, many definitions were either written from the acquiusition metaphor view but some referred to learning as a process, as did many of us in our own definitions. Simon introdced the difference between learning and cognition, ie what is learning and how do we learn.

"Learning:
The acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, practice, or study, or by being taught.

Cognition:
The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses." (Allan, S. (2009) H800 les6 09 W4 A1 3rd March 2009 09.57)

H808 Results

I just opened my course record for H808 - my first module on this Masters to see if by any chance the results were there - and they were.

There was a big fat PASS on the screen.

Delving deeper I found I had averaged 82% - only 3% of a distinction - I'm never happy am I! At Warwick that would have been a distinction, comfortably - do the OU mark to hard or do Warwick mark to easy?

Web 2.0 - more info

Taken from Kevin Hickey's Blog entry 13 March 2009

Here are a few quotes comparing web 0.1 and web 2.0
http://joedrumgoole.com/blog/2006/05/29/web-20-vs-web-10/

Web 1.0 was about reading, Web 2.0 is about writing
Web 1.0 was about companies, Web 2.0 is about communities
Web 1.0 was about taxonomy, Web 2.0 is about tags
Web 1.0 was about owning, Web 2.0 is about sharing

and from http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2006/05/web-10-vs-web-20.html

Web 1.0 was about lectures, Web 2.0 is about conversation
Web 1.0 was about advertising, Web 2.0 is about word of mouth
Web 1.0 was about services sold over the web, Web 2.0 is about web services

Activity 6 The way ideas are produced and spread using social networks

We then watched a presentation made by Wesch to the "library of congress" about web 2.0 and he talks about what happened with the "is the machine us/ing us" video we watched earlier.

He states that because of all the web 2.0 tools such as You Tube, Delicious, Digg it, etc, the viral spread of the word to watch his video was exponential.

He highlights the issues of
web 2.0 building community - people emulating each other and sharing experiences
People wanting to share something with others - not caring what they think - being oneself
A celebration of a new form of empowerment, a new form of community and types of community not seen before, global connections, transcending space and time.

About the Machine video he says
I started with text on paper and thinking about what it meant to move to digital text and what that move really means
what I was trying to get at was when you unpack the impacts of the – digital text and you think about the separation of form and content blogs, Wiki’s, tagging; all of these things leads to a necessity to really think what the web is all about.
it is actually about linking people and it's about linking people in ways that we've never been linked before

User control (link to McLuhan perhaps)
This is like user generated filtering where the users can get together and they can they can give it the thumbs up if they like it.
is user-generated organisation eg Delicious and Digg It
user-generated distribution eg RSS
user-generated commentary eg blogging

really interesting integrated mediascape that we now live in. And at the centre of this mediascape is us.

Basically he was saying that through the web 2.0 tools of organisation, distribution and commentary, people (us) are controlling the sharing of knowledge around the networked world.

What Wesch was intending to do when he made the video, was not to see what people learned from the video, but to see what social action took place after it was published on You Tube.

You can watch Wesch's presntation here on You Tube.

Week 5 Activity 5 - Comparing Video and Text for the same message

Week 5 Activity 5 - Comparing Video and Text for the same message

Now that you have read O’Reilly’s article explaining Web 2.0 and viewed Wesch’s video, we would like you to compare your reactions to these two different ‘texts’ – the written text and the video text – and how the two different media forms affect the way you as the audience receive the messages encoded in them.
How do you think what you have learned is affected by the form of media in which the ideas are represented?
I think what I have learned is significantly effected by how the ideas are represented. For me, reading the printed text was harder than watching the video. This reflects what Saloman found when he did research with children, in the watching a video is less challenging. But he did also state that you don’t use the brain as much as you would with the printed word so perhaps you don’t learn as much or as deeply.
I liked how Wesch used the medium he was telling us about to represent the knowledge, it does seem a bit conflictual to use print to talk about non-print concepts as O’Reilly’s article did.

However, because I read O’Reilly’s article first, you could say that Wesch’s video was being watching with the knowledge from O’Reilly already acquired and that the video was simply reinforcing or helping me to conceptualise the information in O’Reilly. It’s evident from our discussions that Saloman is correct that in what ever media you are practised in interpreting, you will learn the most from (your capacity to interpret) and for me, I know that I have become lazy at reading and do it rarely and the TV and internet take my focus most of the time when I’m not being a mum and housewife! I need things to be short and to the point.

What elements of the video are not present in the written text? The elements in the written text that were in the video including being able to move the text around and edit the text to really reinforce the message to people who are used to viewing and using computer based word processers. Using the HTML background for some of the text narration was useful as it helped you understand what HTML was. Whereas O’Reilly’s article assumed a lot of prior technical knowledge of computer technology which you had to try and comprehend yourself or through other research/ discussions as Frauke did with her husband for Activity 3.
The video not only narrated a message, but showed you what each statement meant too.

Are there aspects of the written text not available in the video? What are they?

The aspects from the written text that were missing in the video were the detail about –
· the comparisons between old web and web 2.0;
· the concept of web 2.0 being about companies with Web 2.0 characteristics;
· the concept of being a service provider and not just a “web site”;
· The strategy a company must adopt to be considered Web 2.0.

Kathy Doncastor writes: -

the video gave an experience of Web 2.0 technologies, while the O'Reilly article discussed them, ie the first *was* the message, was an exemplar of Web 2.0 technologies, and the second was *about* the message of what Web 2.0 is.

I wrote:

Me too, I have reflected on how I wonder if the message would have been different if I had not read O'Reilly first, and just watching the video and how if I'd not seen the video with the sound first, how different I would have really felt about it without the sound. Your point about how O'Reilly gives us the message and Wesch gives us the about is, you could say, the Acquisition metaphor in practice. O'Reilly - the AM and Wesch - developing our understanding of what we have acquired - the conceptualisation metaphor perhaps

. Kathy Doncastor writes

in contrast, the article used text to build a linear argument through the flow and sequentiality of one thing following another that text's linearity allows. It backgounded text itself and foregrounded *content*.

I wrote:

I thought the video was quite linear and sequential as well. It painted a very interesting picture and linked each narration well giving the viewed a good understanding of the message by the end. But you're right in that the print gave us more context and background.

Doncaster, K. (2009) H800 les6 09 Week 5 9 March 2009 12.94

Week 5 Activity 4 - Video about Web 2.0

This activity was to watch a animation/video explaining what WEb 2.0 is. The idea being to compare in the next activity our responses to the written word from Activity 3 (O'Reilly's article on web 2) and the video communication later in Activity 6.

The video is on You Tube here. It's by Michael Wesch, who works at Kansas State University heading up a group which is dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography.

It's interesting to see in the forums that there is a variety of responses to the video. Interestingly I think I was the only one who preferred the video with the sound on. It was just background music, no narration, but for me it helped me to focus my senses on the video. When I turned the music off I found I couldn't concentrate as easily - 1. because I'd already watched it so maybe if I was watching it for the first time I'd have felt differently and 2. there was back ground noise around me so that distracted my audio senses.

The discussions just show how many different preferences there are out there.
We also talked about accessibility issues surrounding the video and came up with obvious ones just as problems for visually impaired and people without broadband internet.

Taking the quote from McLuhan that the "message is the medium" - what this video did was use the medium web 2.0 to explain what web 2.0 is. The video used images of the internet really cleverly to explain what we were being told so people could relate what they use on the internet with the definition of web2.0.

He concluded the video by saying that we are web 2.0, without individual input there would be no web 2.0.

Week 5 Activity 3 - Web 2.0

O’Reilly, T. (2005) What is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software [online]. www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228 accessed 11 March 2009
1. What is Web 2.0?
My own definition of Web 2.0 would have been - web sites that allow full scale interaction between websites and users. Sharing knowledge and information, easier communication routes, everything held online, accessibility, everyone inputting in knowledge.
O’Reilly’s paper states that it is:
· Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard boundary
· Google is a good example of web 2.0 – open source, continuous updates, no downloads, users contribute to applications.
· Web 2.0 sites are about database management Eg Google is not the database, it is the database manager between the surfer and the sources of information.
· Web 2.0 sites are Customer service focused reaching out to everyone
· The service gets better the more people who use it
· Architecture of participation – built in ethic of co-operation
· Harness collective intelligence
· Critical mass
· Users participate in website e.g. Amazon reviews, most popular searches based on activity
· Entries can be made by any user (wikis)
· Social bookmarking
· Folksonomy – collaborative tagging. Allows for overlapping associations instead of rigid categories, in the same way that the brain works
· Viral Marketing drives usage of web 2.0 sites.
· RSS – allows users to subscribe to a page and receive notification when it’s updated
· Peer-to-peer feedback (blogs, trackbacks – when you can see who has linked to your blog)
· Web 2.0 is a service not a product
· Users must be treated as co-developers

Reading other references to O’Reilly I think the key to Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence and the idea of open access to information including concepts such as one ID.

See: O’Reilly, T. (2007) Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again http://comparative.edu.ru:9080/PortalWeb/document/show.action?document.id=16311

2. How would you compare the technological environment described by O’Reilly with the technological conditions at the time of McLuhan’s writing in Activity 2?

McLuhan talks of TV as a way for audiences to participate in sport, for example or a talk show. I think the TV is still very closely relevant to the acquisition metaphor and that web 2.0 brings us closer to the participation metaphor of learning. TV really, at the end of the day, is passive. You can interact with the programmes but this is delayed, could be rigged and also influenced by what you see. Web 2.0 allows COLLABORATION. You can enter into dialogue with peers in Web 2.0 which you can’t do in TV in the same way. So in terms of web 2.0 and the participation metaphor, and from what I may have learnt on the forums, participation is this context is a true 2-way process.

Web 2.0 then is about widespread collaboration, rather than participation as I interpret these words.
“A more sound business model gives users what they want and make it more sustainable, e.g., Google, eBay and Amazon. But Web 2.0 is also collaborative, e.g., blogging, wikis and Wikipedia, Flickr, and Craig’s List. It has been advocated that this “mass collaboration” augments collection and expansion of human knowledge in ways not previously possible (Tapscott and Williams, 2006).” Taken from Hersh, W.R. (2008) Information Retrieval: A health and biomedical perspective, Springer:. Ebook: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=H3f9xsW0a_8C

Miller (2005) helps define the principles of web 2.0:
Web 2.0:
· Freeing of data, allowing it to be discovered, manipulated for different applications than its original intention
· Permits building virtual applications – small, rapid to deploy e.g. Google Maps and its API for using in other websites.
· Is participative – the value of user generated content
· Applications work for the user, able to locate and assemble content to meet our needs
· applications are modular – pick and choose what components you want
· is about sharing – code, content and ideas.
· About communication and facilitating community
· is about remix - we can just go to what we want, make it part of other things we want (e.g. I-Google)
· is smart - applications can use their knowledge of us to meet our needs e.g. Amazon recommendations.
· opens the “long tail” making it increasingly cost effective to service the interests of small groups. (The long tail is, according to Wikipedia, a noun coined in 2004 to describe a niche strategy of business such as Amazon to sell a large number of items in relatively small quantities. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail
· is built on trust
Miller, P. (2005) Web 2.0: Building the New Library in ARIADNE Issue 45 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/miller/

3. What might be the impact of the web in its 2.0 form if “the medium is the message”.
The medium of web 2.0 is essentially about collaboration, so representing knowledge in a Web 2.0 environment where anyone can contribute and discuss it, means that we are learning by the participation metaphor.

Week 5 Activity 2

The course introduces us to Marshall McLuhan, a commentator from the 1960s who coined the phrase " the medium is the message" and "the global village".

What is McLuhan talking about when he speaks about participation?

• People want to be involved and have influence on what appears in the media
• The TV audience acts as a producer
• Instant replays in TV - audience participation in the game - "let us replay the action and observe how this particular effect was attained."
• In the US Football games were halted to watch replays and adverts.
• People expect to participate in every walk of life. In learning children expect to participate not just consume - AM moving to PM again. They want to view the processes, not just the end product.

How does participation using the internet and the Web differ from broadcast media such as TV?

The web, in partciular web 2.o tools allow the audience to truly particpate in the creation of knowledge. Individuals contribute to blogs, wikis, social networking sharing information and knowledge to help others form their opinions. They are involved in the process and participate at all levels.

As Anthony posted what he felt to be the key differences.

. interactive - feedback is given to the user which should/could engage them more effectively;
. selective - the user decides what they want to see/hear (not being spoon fed);
. uncontrolled - a tv programme has a beginning and an end and no possibility of deviation; Web2 is anarchic;
. uncensored - the freedom of authorship encourages freedom of content
. immediate - Web2 is now, not scheduled for some time in the future (or past)
. choice - all of the above give the participant the freedom to do as they wish

Berry, A. (2009) H800 les6 09 Week 5 10 March 2009 11:19

And Sharon gave an example of how the internet really will make the audience into producers, unlike TV.

With the internet, there is the potential to create media and so become a producer....
it creates something that is far beyond what the original producer intended.

Clark, S. (2009) H800 les6 09 Week 5 10 March 2009 13:46

And Mike writes an intersting case for why we're not doing anything new, just a new medium

Obviously, web technology provides far more opportunity for dialogue, but I am
not sure what is really new here. People have been talking to each other for
millenia. The technology is very useful as we can now communicate across the
world rather than just face to face, but we are still cimmunicating in much the
same way (talking and writing) as we ever were.

Gilbert, M. (2009) H800 les6 09 Week 5 11 March 2009 00:37

And Jonathan Campbell helped me understand how audience participation in Big Brother, for example, is still no where near to the type of participation that can happen with Web 2.

Internet participation allows you to not only create the content but to also decide how to interact with it and with the others who are involved. And because the broadcast media offers limited ways to participate then the feedback will
generally be limited to those areas. Internet feedback can be more like a
dialogue without the limitations of topic or time.
The broadcast media offer the avenues of participation and you are limited to using them (vote for this participant or watch this match anytime) but the internet allows you to create the way you want to participate.

Campbell, J. (2009) H800 les6 09 Week 5 11 March 2009 09:50

Tanya McEvoy from another tutor group wrote
" Nowadays you can, pause, rewind, fast forward, change the speed in which the images are delivered to your screen. In some cases the viewer has less control. The BBC have been accused of 'sugar-coating' events and news reports in an attempt to control the medium. Certain programs are denied air-time due to specific content that the government deem inappropriate for the British public.
However, on the Internet, there is no such control. In fact, viewers are able to produce and reproduce material as they see fit, which has consequently lead to serious conflicts with copyright laws. Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube have allowed the average person to actively produce and publish their own medium for the world to see."

McEvoy, T. (2009) Forum: H800 sc2367 Wk5 Act2. 10 March 2009 11:09

Week 5 Activity 1

Update 15th March

Keith pointed out on the forums that "In week 5, Saloman argues "Different media...exert differential influence on learning" . This is in contradiction to the Grocery Truck analogy, right?" Aquilina, K. (2009) H800 les6 09 Week 5 14 March 2009 09.23

Very good point.

Activity 1

How do you think the grocery truck analogy might be an inappropriate conclusion?

The influence on achievement depends on other things, such as the status of the recipient, what they want to do with the delivery content, what other external factors may effect their application of the content.

Different media will create different reactions in people depending on their perception.
The comparative studies only tested factual recall, I don't think this is a valid way to test deep learning and ability to apply learning.

What about those students who are not in a controlled environment but who are in a conventional teaching environment - what if they seek additional media outside the classroom. The controlled conditions of these tests are not in fact a reflection of reality. You cannot assume that students only learn what happens in the classroom, but also all the other learning processes that happen outside it.

Implications to your own learning
1. Do you prefer certain forms of representation to a greater extent than others? If so, why do you think that is the case?Does this preference apply to everything you attempt to learn or does it vary from one type of learning task to another.

I believe I prefer a combination of representation. If I am learning from a lot of prose, I prefer to print the documents that read off the screen. I also learn from watching moving images (videos.) I learn particularly well from talking and doing. Web simulations, and audio/video conferencing tools help me with this. Web 2.0 tools such as blogs (although a simple diary would be enough) help me with the "talking" bit as I can talk to myself about it. I like diagrams where relevant and like orderly information - so process maps are good. I've recently experimented with mind maps and found this useful but it works better with effectively structured articles. When reading print I need to highlight words and make notes (as above). I cannot just read a document and let it sink in. I like to use Web 2.0 tools as I rarely use a pen anymore and my writing is atrocious.

When I learnt to read music and play instruments in my childhood I learnt from print. When I learnt languages I found I was able to interpret the printed word better than the spoken word however when I learn things now, like music and languages, I find it helps to listen and,, with languages, write out my own interpretation of how you pronounce the word, especially with languages such as Greek.

It depends on the subject, I hate to read about history and never read newspapers, but enjoy watching historical documentaries and sometimes the news.

Saloman rightly points out that it depends also on your schemata, or already possessed knowledge of the subject. I'm finding a lot of these papers on H800 hard to read because I don't know much about the subject and if I was in a lecture about the same subject, in real time, I'd like to think I could stop the lecturer and ask questions if I'm struggling to understand it. Also having had a break from formal learning I wonder if my capacity to interpret the academically written word has declined and needs to be practiced again - a bit like the piano. I can't just sit at the piano anymore like I used to. My fingers have lost the muscle memory of many of the notes and my ability to read music has declined when I play a piece that has a larger number of notes (I mean further up and down the keyboard) but I know that a little dedicated practice should bring it back.

Note any implications to you as somebody who supports learning of others.
My reflections above make me realise that we have to be aware of the representations people have become used to using and the "bad" habits their brains have got into. So we have to help them re-learn how to learn and immerse them back into learning carefully. (I support mature students, average age 35 with at least 10 years out of education, like me). We also need to be aware of the demands students have for new media tools. They keep asking for video because this is what they are used to using in their lives, but we have to be careful with this due to the fact that Saloman found that people don't engage as deeply in interpreting the knowledge with TV over the printed word.

Saloman's interpretation of how the interest will be using in learning, reflects the participation metaphor (cf Sfard) and although this was written in 1997, it is relevant to web 2.0 and how we perceive the potential of web 2.0 in education - nodes of interaction, knowledge, team work, self-motivated learners.

Because the DLMBA is a distance learning course assessment is difficult. Most modules are assessed by either 100% written assignment or 100% written examination. In particular the exam is in contradiction to the philosophy of the MBA in that it's about deep learning, learning from others, application of learning at work. An exam tests recall and to an extend application to a case study, but doesn't test the individuals ability at work. The examination is difficult for people who are writing in a second language, and as I found in a 3 hour exam I did in 2003, hand-writing for 3 hours was very difficult given that I never write anymore. The marker would have found it much easier to mark my work if it had been typed and I may have done better.

We are certainly following the grocery truck analogy on the MBA, in fact it is seen by potential students as an advantage of the 3 variants. "1 MBA, 3 modes of delivery". But this is due to the negative perspectives by employers around the world of a DL MBA over a FT MBA but we're certain this is changing so the market demands this generic approach. Potential and current students seem to worry a lot about what their certificate will say, and we have to be very reassuring that there is just one certificate that simply says the Warwick MBA, not how they achieved it. We are currently using wbsLive (virtual classroom software) to replicate exactly what the lecturers do at the induction day - this article disputes what we're doing. But I could defend we're doing it as part of our long term plan. At the moment we are doing this as part of the process of training and immersing the presenters in the resource for use for real T&L at a future point.

Key comments on Saloman (1997)
So the socially held views of different media appear to affect the way learners handle them, the depth in which they engage with them. (So we have to bear this in mind for using things like 2nd life, and other Web 2.0 tools if they're deemed to be a social tool, and not an educational tool, will serious learning take place.)

Coming to comprehend something means networking (The participation metaphor) . However Saloman says refers to free associating, searching, creatively which " is not the way that school-based acquisition....of knowledge is supposed to go." - (The Acquisition metaphor)

Saloman expresses concern though that the benefits of the Internet knowledge nodes, also have weaknesses. It allows for "undisciplined, free-associational, yet tempting wandering among various nodes ("web surfing")." What he says is that people searching one topic easily get lead down a different route. But what's wrong with this, isn't this free learning. Why should learning be so prescriptive. This reminds me of the model of learning in H808, where a topic was introduced and you found the readings yourself, giving you ownership of your learning because you were learning what interested you, but within the learning outcome requirements of the course.

In today's context this is relevant in thinking about Web 2.0 tools and the fact the current and future generations of students are web-savvy and able to multitask. But going back to the articles from earlier weeks about digital natives, of course it is dangerous to assume that all people born in 1988 will be au fait with social networking.

All notes from this article and Activity 1 are here.

Acqusition v Participation Metaphors

Sfard was basically saying in Week 3 that learning is acquisition and learning is participation. On reflection, my thoughts are that acquisition is one of the "ends" of learning, and participation is one of the "means". The other signifcant end to learning is application which takes us onto Brown's article for Week 4 about authentic learning experiences and the enculturation of learning.