derStandard.at/Bildung, the online subbranch of an Austrian newspaper coping with educational subjects, has recently published an article titled "eLearning Trends: Knowledge in digestible bits" [German]. It reflects the results of the Learntec Forum of this year putting emphasis on individualization by examining the trends in eLearning. These are:
- Learning in bits
- Autonomy of Learners
Learning in bits - a bit cumbersome described as "micro-learning" - means learning of small units consisting of text, audio tracks or video clips requiring about 2 to 5 minutes each to be studied.
Autonomy of Learners is understood as the learners ability to freely choose from these bits. An exemplary implementation is a Blended Learning system created by the Austrian police which is to train police officers with current knowledge about criminal procedure.
Why Mediabird is better.
I want to use this occation to provide you with some explanations of principles that Mediabird uses as announced in my last article.
The principle of the moment
Is not new to psychology that learning of bits the best strategy.
All our perception happens in moments. So our perseption of the present happens in nothing else than a serie of moments. Consequntly learning is nothing more than a subsequent understanding of bits: one per moment.
So it's clear that learning according to this principle works best. Mediabird utilizes this principle using content cards (for learning) and flash cards (for training).
If we instead try to learn with the help of full text, our brain is busy splitting the content into parts while being disturbed by all the other content that is not to be learned and distracts from the essential facts. This happens to be one of the main reasons of frustration in the process of learning.
If we make no or only slow progress while studying something, the reason is most probably that we are subliminally disturbed by content that is not in the time of learning. Furthermore, this sometimes results in a feeling of misunderstanding although we are unable to really say what we did not get.
Thus learning in bits is totally intelligible: simply to make transparent what has been understood and what has not and to systematically repeat missing content afterwards.
Mediabird and the principle of the moment
According to the above mentioned article of derStandards bits take 2 to 5 minutes - a lot too long for the a smallest unit. Of cause spending 2 or more minutes learning is good - but not to just one bit. This is far to much to be learnt.
Another missing point here is the necessity of content structuring (realized in Mediabirds-MapView-Concept), embedding content into context (Mediabirds-Marker-Concept) or linking content to a question (Mediabird-Flash-Card-Concept).
Although these are no new principles, Mediabird represents a unique and successful combination of all these.
Mediabird and the Learner's autonomy
Mediabirds meets perfectly all requirements to support the learner's adequat choice of content he wants: Topics can be searched. The separation of topics content into illustrative, main and advanced cards according to its relevance and meaning makes life easier. The learner can slip as deep as he wishes into his topics. Additionally features for an autonomous learning style in Mediabird are:
- Prerequisites to topics, helping to choose the topics which the learner is capable to understand
- Marker concept: e.g. annotation or definition marker provide additional content, that can be displayed on demand but does not disturb the course of reading
Mediabird and collaborative learning
above all Mediabird offers features for collaborative learning and thus offers more than most other learning systems according to American trend. The group support outrageously helps small or big groups to work and learn topics collaboratively: everybody profits from everybody's effort. Notes to specific text passages - normally straight away on expense of later searching same things again - can be placed and saved using markers and than be used by everybody of the group.
Conclusion
The derStandart article points in the correct direction, but illustrates like a lot other articles and books about learning that there is still to little conversation between the areas of psychology and education - otherwise a lot other aspects would have had to be described.
However, we clearly see that Mediabird is in trend. An other advantage as Open Source Tool is that Mediabird is for free. |And with its additional functions for collaborative Learning it will potentially contain a vast amount of different contents in near future.
Convince yourself of Mediabird's unique and innovative concept just now at www.mediabird.net/mediabird/start or contact us at team@mediabird.net.
All the best for your studies,
Your Mediabird Team
2008/10/16 13:58
Technology
