M is for Moodle Learning

THE FEATURE -- Howard Rheingold writes about a generation "immersed in cyberculture" when entering school, "mobile and wirelessly connected". Bryan Alexander from Middlebury College in Vermont calls them "nomadic swarms". I wonder if those attributes can be applied to incoming multimedia degree students at Tipperary Institute.

If so, the new multimedia students would lack any instructions on how to use the online backchannel of Moodle. I think the Tipperary students get plenty of advice on leveraging Moodle because I see their handiwork online, sometimes during late-night sessions from home. This is much the same as cracking open a book and writing notes in response to an overhead question.

Alexander thinks "blogs and wikis were yesterday. Moblogging is today." I cannot fathom how the "swarm learning" he describes is pedagogically sound. Nor can I see how an interested learner can ping his way around the edges of an internet library and receive reinforcement for browsing at the fringes of knowledge.

Developing an understanding for the written word means reflecting on it from various directions. A new student risks falling into a swamp of unrelated (but interesting) material if left to forage alone.

Effective swarm learning needs the rigor of a queen bee and the focus of the worker bees. Any other approach invites academic shortfalls.

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Howard Rheingold -- "M-Learning 4 Generation Txt?"
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