Welcome to my inaugural blog posting for eLearning Roadtrip.
I finally abandoned my long-standing resistance to blogging after reading an ELEARN conference tweet from Professor Dr. Erik Duval commenting on something he had just heard Professor Dr. George Siemens say in a presentation. The gist was that using Web 2.0 technologies was a lot like sex, where reading and writing about about it is very different than simply doing it. I realized that George was absolutely right.
So let us simply do.
The idea for the eLearning Roadtrip had emerged several years before, thanks to an actual road trip I took with Dr. Darcy Hardy and Rob Robinson of the University of Texas System TeleCampus. Just before we started driving north to Orange County from San Diego, Rob pulled over to fill the gas tank for the drive. When he came back from the cashier he held up a medium-sized paper bag. "Beef jerky and beer nuts" he announced when he climbed back in the driver's seat. "It's not a roadtrip without snacks". We headed north after Rob activated his PDA GPS System, which talked us back on to the freeway. We continued through Camp Pendleton, scorched by huge fires just a few days before. We stared out the windows, passed around the beef jerky and talked about fires and floods and earthquakes and natural disasters in CA and TX. A few beer nuts later, Rob was pulling the car up to my hotel's curb. I'd been so engaged in the conversation and camaraderie I'd lost track of time. The miles had passed in an instant.
I always have a strong positive connection with roadtrips. A sense of purpose and direction. Seeing new things. Spending time sharing ideas with friends. Snacks.
This eLearning Roadtrip blog has been developed with an eye toward cultivating that same sense of engagement. Purpose and direction -- a look at some new idea from other industries, a place for you to spend time with people who care about some of the same ideas that you do. Sharing bite-sized, snackable content bits that can be consumed without feeling overwhelmed. Or guilty.
The eLearning industries are at an interesting crossroads. Consumers no longer look at technology mediated learning as one step removed from bad science fiction. In fact, these days, technology-mediated learning covers a wide range of applications, tools, devices, programs and platforms, as well as practices. Lots of acceptance in a variety of market segments. And yet there continues to be a strange malaise in the industries, as if everyone knows it needs to change, it's time to change, and nobody is quite sure what to do first.
Economic conditions are right to push eLearning into a new period of growth, although it is likely that eLearning 2.0 is not going to look a lot like the eLearning 1.0 experiences we have come to know and accept over the past 13 years. That is going to present a lot of people like us with a lot of great new opportunities. But it is also going mean we have a lot of challenges to face. Our industry is morphing and changing as we speak. Will we recognize the future of eLearning when we see it?
Sounds like a perfect time for a roadtrip.
Hopefully you will pardon my occasional use of hokey road, driving and travel cliches. As much as I have been trying to resist, there will certainly some that will be too good to pass by.
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