What I Learnt About Learning 2009

On The Learning Circuits Blog, Tony Karrer’s Big Question for December is What Did You Learn About Learning in 2009?

I reviewed my posts over the year, following Tony’s advice, looking for things that might be relevant to this. There are several recurring themes. Some I’ve also met on other bloggers’ posts. I've selected two main ones that are related - the quick pill and learner engagement.
I’ve a lot of questions, and few convincing answers.

We are often dogged by tradition when it comes to theories of learning. They are many and varied. But it’s too easy to discard time-honoured philosophies and replace them with something new and seemingly innovative.

Thinking and learning

One theme that’s prominent is related to multi-tasking, among a series of other linked ideas that took my interest this year. It prompted me to think of how ideas on thinking and learning evolve in the first place.

The discussions I’ve followed on the merits and demerits of multi-tasking seem to be at cross–purposes to each another. Those who believe that it can be done effectively are seemingly oblivious to hard evidence that it just can’t be done.

The quick pill

Learning is not often easy. It nearly always involves concentration, thought and patience. A person looking for a learning panacea (don’t all learners do this as some stage?) may end up having to make a strategic choice, and stick with that long enough to see if it works.
It doesn’t always work. It’s no different for the teacher who is looking for a quick pill to offer learners.

Teachers have a more difficult job in many respects, for they have first to assess the learners’ progress, and interpret these assessments to see if a method works. Teachers who believe that assessment is not required or who neglect the need for these are short-changing their learners and fooling themselves.

Learners who know something about metacognition may have more facile routes to similar destinations. But they also have to assess effectively their own progress before they know if a learning technique is any use to them.

The smorgasbord of tips and ideas to do with learning that learner and teacher confront, tends to be so much in-your-face - a plethora. And there are conflicting arguments in abundance over the merit of each tempting morsel – which one works for what situation, etc – everything from where the learning is sourced, to how it’s supposed to be assimilated:

Are books a good idea? Should learners be able to read AND listen to mp3s? Does listening to music really assist learning? What type of music is best if it does? Is the Internet a fast option? Can a learner listen to or watch instructional DVDs and read the Internet at the same time?

Does the learner have a so-called digital-immigrant’s barrier to accepting these learning technologies? If so, what can the learner do about it if they have?

What other barriers to learning can impede the progress of the would-be-learner? The list goes on.

Learner engagement

Another theme I’ve seen a lot of this year is learner engagement. Again, a whole set of questions arise out of this.

What is it that hooks the learner? How can the hook be put to further use? Is there a way of maintaining an effective level of engagement once initiated? Is it individual engagement or is a community more likely to achieve a better level of success?

What influence does the support of the learning environment have on learning? Are parents, partners or other significant people important to the learner when it comes to motivation?

What circumstances are best for learning – situational or isolated instruction? Of these, are the benefits associated with either, dependent on the occasion?

Where does praising the learner fit into all this?

I find this difficult. I’ve covered so much ground this year, it’s a hard task to prioritise and select the most significant ideas or the most interesting thoughts, for I’m really not sure of their relative importance.

They are all fascinating in their own captivating way. The practice of the good teacher is to select, revise and re-activate from past actions those that work best in the ever-changing environment of learning.

Lead by Example

It could be that the purpose of your life is only
to serve as a warning to others – Ashleigh Brilliant.

This month, The Learning Circuits Blog has the theme:

‘Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning’.

Tony Karrer puts The Big Question:

How do I communicate the value of social
media as a learning tool to my organization?

The answer I have for him is, perhaps very slowly.


In the year 2000 I used Web1.0 technology in an attempt to emulate Web2.0. At that time I didn't know what Web2.0 was.

As senior teacher, I began designing web pages and developing elearning resources permitting learner interaction and feedback. I was labelled as a geek. This was despite the organisational approval, funding and planning time provided for me to engage in the development of elearning resources.

In 2002, as a full-time elearning teacher, this opinion of my role in using digital technology was confirmed by a newly appointed manager.

When she saw what I was doing using Web1.0/Web2.0 technology, she openly declared that she was not a geek. She affirmed that she could never embrace what I was practicing, for she did not want to be seen as a geek.

In 2007, a leading light on the staff created her blog especially, but not exclusively, for staff use and interaction. I was astonished that, from an organisation that supported hundreds of teaching staff, there were so few participants who entered into discussion on the blog.

In 2008, while working in the same organisation, I started a blog.

I discovered that many of my colleagues viewed this practice as a risky business. Some were still not sure what a blog was.

They had a vague idea that web pages, blogs and wikis, were all related in some way, but their exact function, usefulness and operational value were unclear to many and often viewed with suspicion. I have many colleagues who still find Web2.0 quite elusive.

In 2009, I'm pleased to share the blogosphere with several work colleagues ( 1 ), ( 2 ), ( 3 ), ( 4 ), ( 5 ), ( 6 ), ( 7 ) who actively maintain their blogs and post regularly.

Some have been blogging since early 2007. Whether anything I did had any influence on my colleagues to do likewise is purely a matter for conjecture. It’s been a long time.

But when it comes to communicating the value of social media as a learning tool, leading by example may be as good a way as any.

Binge Thinking

This month, The Big Question on the Learning Circuits Blog is to do with New Presenter and Learner Methods and Skills.

Multitasking is now every presenter’s problem. Tony Karrer posits, “that there are things that presenters and learners should do to address this.”

Multitasking is binge thinking. It has the potential to distend the capacity of the brain so that normal thinking to do with any one task, including learning, becomes severely impaired. Tony says it all here.

Scott Flansburg is a supreme example of how a person can perform amazing calculative feats. He executes thinking skills that traditionally command extremely high concentration levels and all the thinking power that permits this. His unique ability to close down areas of the brain normally associated with other peripheral tasks makes him a matchless unitasker.

Thinking tires the brain

I am convinced that people often shut down areas of their brains automatically to make it easier to think. For instance, it is now known that when making decisions, the brain’s executive resources can be taxed to an extent that cognitive ability is considerably impaired. To prevent this happening in some situations, fast track routines are adopted.

Too much decision making over a short space of time literally tires the brain. Do people make decisions when attending a presentation? You bet they do, if they make a genuine attempt to learn from it.

PowerPoint and other potential vagaries

So why is it that when the audience is supposedly concentrating on the single task of learning, the presenter insists on giving them a series of tasks to perform synchronously? Cognitive overload associated with the misuse of PowerPoint has become a talking point. It is an issue because it’s real.

Learners well know that when the presenter reads the text from a PowerPoint slide, the best thing to do is to shut the eyes and listen.

So why is the text on the PowerPoint slide in the first place? For the presenter? No! It’s there because the presenter knows nothing about cognitive overload. A better way is for the presenter to shut up and let the learner do his or her own reading.

Take note

Tony refers to backchannel as a distraction for the presenter. I’m not surprised he finds it distracting. It is nevertheless an inevitable activity if learners are engaged in taking notes, by whatever means they use.

Through years at school, university and attending hundreds of seminars since then, I have learnt to take notes while giving nearly full attention to a presentation. It’s one multitasking practice that I’m good at. But not everyone has this skill.

What I’ve found often helps is if the presenter provides printed notes on the PowerPoint bullets – before the presentation. This frees up the brain when it comes to taking notes. I just write my additional notes on the PowerPoint printout.

Cognitive engagement

But there is another aspect to presentation – and that is of intent.

What does the presenter really want the learner to take away from the experience? If the seminar has a sales pitch, it may be better not to dwell too much on the facts and details that a learner may take away.

Research has shown that the verbal content of a presentation, whether in speech or text, is only a small part of the total message conveyed to the attendee. How often has a conference goer raved about a ‘keynote’, reporting that the best thing about the presentation was its entertainment value?

What if the presentation was entirely lacking in entertainment, yet the same factual information was presented? Herein may lie a pedagogical message.

Entertainment provides two important features to the learner. It provides the necessary breaks between learning tasks and prevents the possible onset of cognitive overload brought on through multitasking. It also adds interest and factual significance by association.

New Strategies? New Skills? A Big Question

Tony Karrer’s Big Question for July has a syntax that’s almost rhetorical: New Skills and Knowledge for Learning Professionals?

Does he suggest that, perhaps, there is nothing new in that field?
Or is he genuinely asking for innovative ideas on what skills learning professionals should have?

I couldn’t help thinking how taken aback I was at Tony’s reaction to one of my last month’s posts. I’d rattled it off almost like an email reply. When he said he had to walk through it and take notes, he got me thinking about what I’d written. I went back and read it through to check that he was talking about the same post. The first bullet in the closing list on attaining proficiency read:

• identify the required base-knowledge/skills, foster strategies for these to be recognised as key, and provide avenues for their appropriate acquisition and practice

That’s all very simply put in a bullet. It’s the unpacking of what’s bulletised that I think Tony’s after when he asks his Big Question.
In thinking of the complexity of what is embraced in that bullet, a plethora of other lists, schemes and recent and not-so-recent ideas came to mind.

I often take a backward look at Bloom’s Taxonomy, for instance.


New skills?

If the above heirarchy of thinking skills is of any use to the young learner, it must surely be useful in some form to a professional who is still learning. Aren’t we all supposed to be lifelong learners? Isn’t that what our glorious learning journeys are all meant to be about?

Just because the so-called lower-order-thinking-skills are fundamental to the others in the list does not mean that they’re to be neglected once the higher skills are attained. You may as well forget about tyre maintenance and just see to the fine tuning of a car engine before setting off on a long drive. When it comes to traction and treads, there are always new developments in the marketplace. So it is with knowledge in the professional arena.

The fundamentals of learning, understanding and application of knowledge don’t mutate simply because someone has learnt a lot. Why relegate Bloom’s Taxonomy to the classroom? There’s a deal of wisdom there that can be applied to everyday learning in the workplace.

Timely reminders

Often the skilled and knowledgeable person needs to be reminded of some of the strategies that are at their disposal. Knowing what to do, and having the skills to be able to do it, are only part of what a professional needs in order to exercise initiative. The other and most important element is recognising where and when these knowledge and skills can be and should be applied. This takes practice and there’s seldom much time to do this in day-to-day routines.

How people think, and what that thinking is associated with, varies widely from person to person. It’s the context that’s often so important for specific thinking to occur if it's to happen at all. Innovators and naturally creative people rarely need tuition in the elements of how to be innovative or creative. Others new to these skills need relevant and appropriate contexts in order to flex their creativity and innovation.

Whether it is learning to touch-type, finding out how to embed a YouTube video in an announcements page of an LMS, or constructing a new strategy from peer feedback on a project, there needs to be a focus that includes:

• the learner,
  
  
• the relevant application of what’s to be learnt,
  
  
• the available resources for use by the learner, and
  
  
• the time allocated specifically for that up-skilling to happen.

Follow through is essential: that the learner has immediate, relevant and appropriate opportunity to practice what’s been learnt.


Relevant references:

Andrew Churches - Bloom’s (Digital) Taxonomy

http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/bloom%27s+Digital+taxonomy+v3.01.pdf

UNESCO - Task Force on Education for the Twenty-first Century

http://www.unesco.org/delors/index.html
http://www.unesco.org/delors/fourpil.htm
http://www.unesco.org/delors/delors_e.pdf

Where My Time Is Spent

This month’s Big Question on The Learning Circuits Blog is
“where is your time spent?” It paraphrases this in a series of more specific questions that saved me time in thinking up sub-headings for the sections in this post.

Where do I spend my time?

I think a more important question here is ‘when and how do I spend my time?' However, here’s the 'where', per day, based on normal weekday activities averaged over a 7 day period, not including holidays:


As you can see, I have a 28+ hour day. Short of pitching the world off its orbital path to accommodate all this, obviously there has to be some overlap. Indeed, to be realistic, this is what I find – not multi-tasking – but the ‘where’ tends to dictate this more than the ‘when and how’. When and how I spend my time is another matter.

How do I find time for all the relatively newer things
like reading blogs, twitter, social networks, etc?

In 2001, I discovered some useful things about myself. I learned more about when the best time is for me to think and reflect. I discovered that the early hours of the day was a good time to reflect on the day yet to come, and do some planning for that. The best and most convenient time for this is when travelling to work by bus.

For me this – together with its more relaxed counterpart, that of travelling home on the bus – provides an efficient use of otherwise wasted time. So it does two things. It gets me to and from work. It also helps me with the efficient use of my time at work and at home.

I might plan a strategy for tackling a ticklish problem at work to do with my learning group, for instance. Or I might have a bright idea for a blog post and have the time to think through different ways that it could be done. In fact, most of my initial thinking is done on the bus or at times like that where I've no option but to be there.

Good planning, of course, has to be flexible. When things don’t go to plan, a new plan must be drafted or the old one reshaped. Here’s when contingencies can also be mulled over while still in the planning stages – another efficiency trick. That way, not so much time has to be spent rethinking the one-and-only, platinum-plated, carbon-nano-tube-reinforced plan.

What am I doing less of today
than I was 3-5 years ago?

I don’t write so many letters. I spend more time writing equivalent emails and social networking to cover the same reasons for writing letters. With my older daughter, Hannah, at university and living in another city, I now spend time communicating with her through txting and Facebook and on the telephone.

This weekend, for instance, I took some photographs of my youngest daughter, Catriona, with my Sony digital. She was all set to be off to a Saturday night fancy dress party. I just had to catch a few pix of her.

Today (Sunday) I spent some time trimming the photographs and uploading them to Flickr and Facebook while chatting with Hannah online. This is one of the overlaps, in this case an overlap of family time spent with social networking and using digital technology.

Do I have less of a life with
all of these new things?

Most certainly and categorically not. In 2007 and at the age of 60, I had a hip joint replaced. That was in August. In October, my family whisked me off to Auckland to spend a weekend with them. I’d got rid of my sticks by that time and was able to hold a digital camera steadily enough to nearly fill 2 Gb of upload.

When I got home on the Sunday night I uploaded the digital pix to Facebook and used these in communication with family overseas.

Similarly in December that same year, when I was still inebriated with my new mobility, I took Catriona across the harbour on a ferry to explore Matiu-Somes Island. Once again, the digitals provided an incentive to blend relaxation with family and a bit of web2.0 technology.

The joy of the immediacy in using today’s technologies – my chat with Hannah while uploading pictures taken the night before – the rapid return to communicate pix taken on holiday immediately with family overseas – the fun of previewing pix that were taken on Matiu-Somes Island while returning on the ferry – do not detract from life.

At the NetSafe Conference July 2008 I stepped out to the shore of Lake Wakatipu at morning tea. I had my camera in my pocket and I captured a scene that has brought back memories of the short time spent at the lakeside. The playback is on Facebook and has been appreciated by family and friends alike.

But there are many moments of tranquillity that I have spent with others or in solitude without the accompaniment of technology - I am guilty of this. In those times I either leave the technology (digital cam – mobile phone) at home or in my pocket, switched off. I make the choice.

Workplace Learning in 10 Years

Tony Karrer asks the BIG question,

If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see?

In answering this, I’m going to be brief and pragmatic.

Ten years is a long time to project when making such a prediction. We have to forget about the current global economic crisis that’s putting everything, including workplace learning, into a tight spin. I’m assuming that we will have well recovered from this trauma by 2019.

We also have to shut our minds to the time warps that technology and its uses seem to have experienced in the past 10 years. Technology will experience its own ‘crash’ that we will have to contend with. This is already starting to happen with technowhelm, and I estimate that such a trough is not far off. My prediction is that the crazy technological frenzy that appears to be peaking at the moment will tend to moderate tolerably.

Drawing from the past:

Ten years ago, we might have been forgiven for thinking that the future of workplace learning in 2009 lay in computer assisted learning. Advancing a further five years and we could have been excused for believing that training databases were going to be action packed with animated instruction kits and video assisted training tools.

None of these predictions became general features of workplace learning and for a number of differing reasons. A few components of these found their way into specialist programs, limited in their extent by budgetary factors.

Learning must be accessible:

Accessibility of any information is the main limitation on its effective application. With the sheer volume of digital data that is likely to be associated with any organisation, access will become a major feature of any support system providing useful learning. It’s my best guess of the most efficient way for it to be brought about. The likelihood is that accessibility will become a major issue well before the year 2019 and will have to be dealt with or bust.

Over the past few years resourcefulness and conservation have been features of many societal practices. This cultural trait will find its way into the processes to do with how knowledge is stored, and disseminated.

Knowledge management will have swept a wide orbit and will return along a familiar but digitally oriented groove. Filtering and replenishing will be based on practice and resultant success, rather than theoretical principles governing what’s deemed to be useful.

Data retrieval will have become a fine art, almost an algorithmic feature of the technology of an organisation, rather than a problematic process within it. Already we have successful examples of data being managed on the Internet in Wikipedia and examples like this will serve as practicing models for the design of accessible data systems.

The networks:

Digital networking may well have found a niche by 2019. The study of how online groups behave and operate, tackled from the standpoint of best optimised rather than random mixes, will develop some of its own fundamental principles.

Sharing skills and knowledge, and working collaboratively in doing this, using refined technologies and their developments and appropriate techniques, will be lean and more efficient. Partnerships within and between organisations will be mutual organisational strengths, rather than organisational threats in a competitive environment.

Taxonomies for learning:

Training and learning in the workplace will become principled studies. Practical taxonomies will evolve. Technologies and associated learning techniques are selected for particular learning needs.

For this learning need, use this learning practice, is a pithy summary of how it will work out for most workplace learning needs in 2019.

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The Baby, The Bath and The Bathwater

Tony Karrer’s Big Question for the month of December is, ‘What did you learn about learning in 2008?’

This has certainly been a year of learning for me. I was involved in several projects, not all of them employment related. But they were all to do with teaching and learning.

The long and the short of it all is, that I’ve learnt so much about learning this year; I can’t possibly cover it all in one post. So I’ve prioritised my list down to one item.

Bookshops as big as supermarkets:

Fifteen years ago, I listened to a soliloquy from a work colleague, at a meeting on learning resources. The proclamation was that books would be out of date in 5 to 10 years. I wondered about this idea. At the time, I couldn’t easily imagine the book being surpassed, and eventually replaced, by digital equivalents.

Well, it didn’t happen. Instead, bookstalls became bookshops, and now we have bookshops like supermarkets. During most of this year, my older daughter has worked part-time in Borders, New Zealand. It is a huge new bookstore - easily one of the biggest shops of its type in Wellington.

The demise of the textbook:

But I was reminded of the prediction of the disappearance of books when I came across Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s post in September this year, and listened to her video. She spoke of the demise of the textbook.

I reflected on the meaningful consequences of getting rid of books, and all resources like them, to do with content. This is what Sheryl is proposing as a panacea for enabling learning in the twenty-first century. She posits that what we have to do is ‘to unlearn’, for ‘learning doesn’t work that way anymore’. There is merit in some of what she says.

Meaningful, authentic, passion-based scholarship:

She speaks of ‘meaningful, authentic, passion-based scholarship’ while talking about preparing learners for an age that isn’t here yet. And again, I wonder.

I speculate, as she does, on what it is that we should be teaching our students, if we don’t really know what they will need in the future. But I also wonder about the long-term consequences of eschewing content.

Closely related to this theme are my experiences with some new projects that I have been involved with this year. These projects have not gone according to plan, for the plan involved dismissing previous experience and knowledge as past history.

The accumulated experience and knowledge - the content - that could have assisted some of these projects, if only by consideration of what didn’t work, was simply not permitted to happen. The projects were all to do with learning. In particular, some were to do with elearning.

Leaky buildings:

I won’t be specific here, though I’m willing to discuss this fully in a different forum. But it’s all too much like the so-called leaky building syndrome that struck the property industry in New Zealand earlier this century.

Through the introduction of new standards and materials, and by discarding established building practices – content – the building industry in New Zealand plunged itself into crisis. Houses were constructed that simply rotted from the inside, due to a number of unforeseen conditions that were fostered within the wall cavities of the buildings.

Examination of the old standards, and consideration of why they had been established in the first place, showed that many fundamental portions of knowledge had been overlooked when introducing the new standards and construction methods. Implementing the use of a combination of new building materials, and new, untested building standards, caused a minor disaster in that industry that’s still being cleared up today.

Leaky pipes:

A minor crisis also occurred in New Zealand, near the end of last century, when unleaded automobile fuel was formulated and commercially introduced to the public.

Insufficient testing, of a fundamental nature, led to several instances of fuel hose erosion resulting in the withdrawal and reformulating of some newly introduced automobile fuels. This came about through a similar lack of consideration of what had gone before.

Learning to read:

Some twenty years ago in New Zealand, phonetics as a method used in teaching reading, was removed from the curriculum, in favour of so-called word-recognition. My oldest daughter would have been severely affected through this curricular move, had I not given her necessary coaching, using phonetics.

Luckily, I had enough common sense to help her myself, when I eventually found she was having difficulty learning to read. Phonetics is now being re-introduced as one of the methods for teaching reading in schools.

Postmodernism?

It is as if it is part of a growing culture – some say it’s a manifestation of postmodernism – that infuses the thinking like mycelia, whenever innovation is called upon. Innovation is a wonderful thing if it works.

Simply discarding past experience and knowledge in the name of replacing those with some new and seemingly innovative idea, may not withstand the test of time.

What we teach learners today, and what they learn, must withstand the test of time. This applies, whether it is process or content.

This year, I wondered if throwing out the baby with the bath and the bathwater is a useful technique for achieving progress in learning.

The Elearning Apprentice

Tony Karrer has taken the initiative to revisit a question asked in a previous post, about First eLearning:

What advice would you give to someone

new to the field of elearning?

This question is worthy of being asked twice.

I admit that I lurked on this one - for a few weeks.

Observation:

My observation of teachers starting into elearning has shown that the usefulness of their experiences in the early stages can vary considerably. This is often because of ad hoc approaches to their so-called upskilling.

This post outlines the areas of need I believe are essential for a first elearner. They are listed roughly in order of importance, but all are essential.

No skill is too rudimentary to acquire:

Learners who are willing to put in the time, pursuing a grounding in these basic skills, on their own or in a course designed along the lines given here, will be well on the way to coping with elearning.

At first reading, some of these skills may appear to be too rudimentary. If absent they will lead to faltering at the early stages when the elearning apprentice should be building on higher skills, as a student or as an elearning instructor.

All of the skills listed here are those an elearning instructor may well need in helping a student learn the same skills, and so must form part of the elearning portfolio.

Here's my To-learn-list for the Elearning Apprentice links to sections:
(Relevant information lies in a link at the start of each header.)

short-keys
file management
netiquette
search engines
study the URL
an image authoring tool
an html editor or html writer
skills in LMS or VLE

Pre-requisite 1: Why a knowledge of short-keys?

As basic as this skill may seem, it is essential for any elearning apprentice to have a practicing knowledge of the rudiments of using short-cuts on the keyboard. Without these skills, working with the mouse on pull-down menus would prove tedious in the extreme. Short-keys are powerful key-strokes that find universal use on a huge variety of software.

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Pre-requisite 2: Why file management?

File management skills are essential for e-tidiness. As much as these seem old hat (back to basics and all that) ignoring their essential worth can mean confusion, and even some real headachy problems for the apprentice elearner later on.

As well, fundamentals such as knowledge and understanding of file dimension and file size, and the distinction between the two, are part of the ABC that an elearning apprentice must follow.

Pre-requisite 3: Why netiquette?

Basic communication skills are often overlooked. Elearning apprentices need those skills if only to assist with their own learning. For anyone intending to use their elearning skills for the instruction of others, netiquette is a life and death necessity.

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Pre-requisite 4: Why search engines?

Being able to search effectively using a database or web search engine is another fundamental skill. It brings into play pre-requisites 1 and 2, and is the bread and butter of the elearning researcher.

Pre-requisite 5: Why study the URL?

Understanding the structure of a URL and what it means to the technician is key to understanding how links operate in web-based elearning today. An introductory knowledge of how a URL can be applied utilises a direct application of file management skills.

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Pre-requisite 6: Why an image authoring tool?

An in-depth knowledge of an image authoring tool is not required and could well be a waste of time. I’d recommend that this be a part of an introduction, but not a major component. It can provide significant useful transferable skills.

Designing images and attempting to make a simple animation can give an elearning apprentice the feel of how these tools work. Much of the fundamental theory of how they function is also transferable. Some authoring tools are more complex to use than others. The simplest is probably the most efficient to use in terms of time spent learning the basics.

For instance, creating an animation in PhotoShop ImageReady involves much the same principles as in Flash. ImageReady is more likely to convey the principles with less angst and in a much shorter space of time, and so prove more effective. It may be that a suitable Web2.0 tool can convey the same transferable skills.

The emphasis is on the transferable skills.

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Pre-requisite 7: Why an html editor or html writer?

Once again, there are a lot of transferable skills that can be acquired from a good introduction to html writing/editing, without having to learn much at all of the hypertext markup language (html).

A good WYSIWYG that permits the learner to appreciate layout as well as functionality, can open up a cornucopia of valuable skills.

Building html in single pages on a server with relative links to images and other pages on the same server can also provide invaluable practice in file management. Building html in single pages with absolute links to Internet sites can be a useful skill for the elearning instructor.

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Pre-requisite 8: Why skills in LMS or VLE?

The application of the aforementioned skills come into their own when an elearning apprentice operates, hands-on for the first time, a learning management system or virtual learning environment, such as Moodle. These applications are the bread and butter of elearning instruction.

In the unlikely situation where the elearning apprentice does not have the opportunity to use one of those applications, building a blog and actively using it with links, uploads, downloads and embeds can cover many of the skills required. Participation in challenges, such as the past Comment Challenge, can provide the elearning apprentice with many far reaching skills and ideas for life-long elearning.

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