July 6, 2006

Learning Technologies

It is getting more difficult to determine traditional productivity tecnologies from learning technologies.  Or is there a difference at all?  We have been building "learning" technologies since 1998 as a company and as individuals we have been doing it much longer. 

When I was in graduate school I worked on a hypermedia project that provided specific scanerios of students with behavior disorders.  We developed video of the students in their own environment, we captured audio of experts in the field explaining the students disorders, and created a searchable database of information about each of the students.  It was a very interesting project and I learned so much about designing, developing, and implementing technology in the classroom. 

Our design model was based on cognitive flexibility (here, here, and the original project papers here) and focused on allowing the learners to construct their own knowledge frameworks by browsing through the information in a non-linear fashion.

Here we are 11 years later and many of those design features are still appropriate.  Only now we are weaving through our knowledge through a nonlinear web and the information isn't neatily packaged on a videodisc and an Authorware file.  ( I was the Authorware developer on the project for a few years.)  It would seem allowing a learner to create knowledge frameworks within a web environment would also be a wonderful way to create learning opportunities.  Now we need to figure out how we are going to do that!



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