7. ”Barn lär sig efter skolan - det finns studier
där ute som visar att de är på nätet, hitta
intressen från kamratkretsar och blir
experter och hittar mentorer.
Så allt som vi egentligen behöver göra är att
se till att bibliotek, skolor och andra liknande
instanser inser hur de kan vara en del av
det lärandet, som redan pågår”
Learningfreedomandtheweb.org
BARN
The values of Connected Learning are:
EquityEducation opportunities shall be available and accessible to all young people and bridge the gap in informal learning opportunities that exists between youth in wealthy and under-privileged circumstances
Full participation“Learning environments, communities, and civic life thrive when all members actively engage and contribute.”
Social connectionLearning requires a sense of belonging, it is “meaningful when it is part of valued social relationships and shared practice, culture, and identity.”
Connected learning is based upon three learning principles and three design principles.
These are the learning principles of connected learning:
Interest poweredConnect to the learner’s innate and developed interests. Starting point: the learners passion in life, whatever that might be. E.g. soccer, knitting, Minecraft, gardening,
Peer supportedConnect to friends and peers, including adults
Academically orientedConnect to academic subjects, institutions, and credentials
These are the design principles of connected learning:
Connected learning activities need to be designed with a
Shared purposebecause adults and youth together, when making use of social media and sharing the same interests and goals, can boost intergenerational learning and connection
Production-centered: learning by making: effective learning spaces are makerspaces where creating, making, producing, experimenting, remixing, decoding, and designing is facilitated
Openly networked “Learning is most resilient when it is linked and reinforced across settings of home, school, peer culture, and community.”
The values of Connected Learning are:
EquityEducation opportunities shall be available and accessible to all young people and bridge the gap in informal learning opportunities that exists between youth in wealthy and under-privileged circumstances
Full participation“Learning environments, communities, and civic life thrive when all members actively engage and contribute.”
Social connectionLearning requires a sense of belonging, it is “meaningful when it is part of valued social relationships and shared practice, culture, and identity.”
The Mozilla Foundation is a global nonprofit mostly known for their Firefox web browser. What many don't know is that they also are one of the driving forces and sponsors behind the connected learning movement. Mozilla’s mission is to promote openness, innovation, and opportunity on the web, so that it remains open, accessible, knowable, and interoperable. In short: to ensure that the web remains a public resource. Teaching the web and promoting web literacy and privacy, consequently, are at the core of Mozilla’s activities. Through the collaborative creation of a Web Literacy Map and collaborative learning events like Maker Parties, together with engagement in Hive Learning Networks, among others, Mozilla supports web literacy in all kinds of settings. Together with partners from the formal and non-formal learning sector, including libraries, Mozilla supports learning that is networked, open and focused on the web as one of the main drivers for progress and new opportunities in the world of today. In order to structure, visualize and promote digital literacy Mozilla has started working on what they call a web literacy map, and the idea is that this map can be used both by individuals and organizations as a way of defining what needs to be done in order to fill in the digital literacy gaps for anyone who want to explore, create and share things on the web.
As we have seen, one of the learning principles of connected learing is that it is academically oriented. That means that it puts a strong emphasis on motivation, participation, and the recognition of skills. Mozilla Open Badges are a way to put this into practice. They are a new way to accredit and verify learning. The Open Badges project project was initiated by Mozilla, but it works openly with other organizations and individuals in the Badge Alliance Network. Their purpose is “to build and support an open badging ecosystem, with a focus on shared values including openness, learner agency and innovation. The badging idea is based upon the presumption that both informal and formal learning achievements need to be evaluated and taken into consideration as parts of a persons backpack of visible skills and competencies. Digital badges is still an experimental project, and there are som technical issues to be solved before it can become a wide spread tool for recognition of skills, but hopefully within a few years more and more learning institutions will join the project and give digital badges a more solid ground.
Here we can see some badges that I have earnedmyself from being active in the Mozilla Webmaker network. For me they work both as nicely looking rewards for time and effort that I have put into the project but also as a way of structuring my own informal learning and make it more visible for my self and others.
The connected learning movement originated in the United States and is now spreading around the world. One of the main vehicles for connected learning principles is what is called Hive communities and networks. They connect schools & youth-serving orgs in metropolitan areas to explore, create and share digital skills. Public libraries are participating in these Hives and this gives opportunities to hop onboard a cross-border movement for interest-powered, peer-supported and academically oriented learning learning. For some libraries, the connected learning principles are somewhat new and not yet tested, while for others they match quite well what they already have been experimenting with in various learning initiatives inspired by collaborative learning programmes and trends such as Learning 2.0 and E-learning 2.0
Let's take a brief look at some libraries worldwide that have started implementing connected learning principles in their efforts to promote digital literacy and community cohesion among youth.
Here we see some examples of public libraries In the US and in Canada that have joined Hive networks and work in structured way together with schools and youth supporting organizations to offer learning opportunities for youth outside of school.
Many libraries in Europe also have started implementing connected learning principles into their curricula. Even though most of them don’t use a specific connected learning vocabulary in their way of describing themselves, since they are using methods that in one way or another match connected learning principles they qualify as ’connected libraries’, and therefore I have included them in this presentation. The ones I have chosen to highlight are Stockholm Public Library's new library in Kista that opens in just a few days, Skaparbibblan (the Maker Library) in Vaggeryd, Sweden and Frysklab in Frysland, Netherlands which is the world's first mobile library Fab Lab. I also would like to mention the digital literacy project IT Guides in Örebro, Sweden, which involves youth and elderly in intergenerational learning.