Book review
The Connecticon
Learning for the Connected Generation
Authors: Frank Rennie & Robin Mason
Published by Information Age 2004
Review by John Harris, Director of Education, Epic
Do we need new words to capture the changing world
resulting from ubiquitous high speed internet connectivity? Possibly,
yes. Is “connecticon” one such word? I doubt it. 'Connecticon'
is a word coined to describe the physical infrastructure, the people
and the emergent potential for education and innovation afforded
by the interaction between people and between technological devices.
This book provides a perspective on learning in connected communities
containing some good description and analysis of ideas around pedagogy,
virtual communities and learning objects. It also provides case
studies of community-based online learning experiences that exemplify
the author’s ideas.
The book plays down the role of self-study based interactive e-learning
materials describing them as a “horseless-carriage”
use of technology. This is odd as there has always been a place
for self-study in learning and, in our experience, they often form
a core part of a truly blended learning experience. Where there
seems to be a national decline in the take up of “hard”
subjects such as sciences, maths, engineering and medicine, we should
not overlook the importance of improving the learning of the knowledge-based
components through the use of high quality interactive self-study
materials. Unfortunately, the examples shown of learning objects
look uniformly poor. Dense pages of uniform text that make no allowance
for the users’ need to skim and scan highlight the inadequacies
of much higher education-based content.
The book provides a good overview of the current landscape of e-learning
in higher education, particularly as it might apply to liberal arts-based
subjects. It will particularly appeal to educationalists who put
the construction of knowledge through online interactions, often
using discussion forums, at the centre of their learning. However,
it does not really address what learning might look to “the
connected generation”. To be a digital native, you would have
started using the internet as a child and would have been born in
the late eighties at the earliest. This book does not really touch
on how a generation who have lived with the internet, mobile phones
and highly interactive platform games might learn.
The verdict: good if you wish to make sense of the current landscape
of connected learning in higher education, not so good if you wish
to understand how the truly “connected generation” learns.
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