I’m at the AECT Board of Director’s meeting / Research Symposium this week. Rick
Schwier (@schwier) is presenting about learning in formal, non-formal, and informal environments. Listening to him talk helped me crystalize something I already sort of knew but had never but into words to my satisfaction.
- IF people construct meaning based on their own prior knowledge and past experience, and
- IF a wide variety of tools and content like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, OpenCourseWare, blogs, etc., are significant, important parts of some people’s every day lives, and
- IF significant, important parts of daily life contribute substantially to one’s prior knowledge and past experience,
- THEN these people will draw heavily on tools and content like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, OpenCourseWare as they construct meaning.
There are multiple layers of implication that accordion out both upward and downward, but I believe this core idea is very important. Thanks, Rick!
Do you use to intend to use three ‘if’ clauses here, or do you really mean ‘only if’?
It’s one thing to say, “If people do A,B and C then you can be pretty sure they’ll do D.”
And something very different to say “We can argue people do D only if we’re pretty sure they do A, B, and C.”
In the former, they might do D if they do A, B and C, but they might also do D for other reasons, even if A,B and C are not the case. On the latter, they do D only if they do A,B, and C.
You are arguing the former, but the tone seems to imply the latter. I could be reading into the tone a bit, but I thought I’d double check…