Enter Nonlinear, Visually Active (Cognitively Engaged) Learning

From Teemu Arina (hat tip to mega-educator aggregator, Stephen Downes)

This is exactly why those people who use RSS readers to scan through thousands of feeds, read blog posts from various decentrally connected sources and who engage themselves into assembling multiple unrelated sources of information into one (probing connections between them) have much greater ability to sense and respond to changing conditions in increasingly complex environments than those who read only the major newspapers, watch only the major news networks and don’t put themselves into a difficult situation of being hammered with a lot of stuff at once.

Linear, intentional learning was how you learned in the past. Enter nonlinear, visually active way of learning of the future.

This is where we must move and yet, it starts with teachers building their own Personal Learning Network from a variety of sources. 

• Are your students building a PLN for each project or major course of study?
  (We use igoogle & netvibes.)
• Do they have to authentically research a unique topic, and synthesize, summarize, and collaborate with others to explain both verbally and visually?  (like Flat Classroom but certainly that is not the only example.)
• What is your story?  What do you think needs to happen to move students to the nonlinear, visually active mode of learning, that I might add, must also include cognitive engagement by the person and not just an attempt at plagiarizing (which is the top issue I have when moving to this model.)

Technorati Tags: Stephen Downes, Teemu Arina, education, teaching, learning

Slide taken from Flattening Classrooms, Expanding Minds.