L&D 2020: Shaping change in learning
Society
Knowledge society
We have long been accessing advanced information and communications technologies. These have profoundly changed our learning processes and how we use, create and share knowledge. Although work became knowledge-intense many years ago, the same intensity has been occurring across wider society since the turn of the century.
People can now package even material objects in virtual layers of software and information, turn them into informationalised artefacts and link them to the web. Our physical spaces are blending material, informational and communicative structures and functionality1.
While productive knowledge activities have tended to concentrate in geographical regions, knowledge is globally distributed and linked via the web’s power and mobile communications technologies. People increasingly need to process new knowledge and mobilise socially and geographically distributed resources. As a result, ‘knowing’ has become an increasingly dynamic social phenomenon. Everyday knowledge needs to be reproduced, created, and recombined fast – and in problem contexts difficult to imitate in educational institutions1.
Rote learning of facts became redundant many years ago once everyone had access to ubiquitous networks of information. Learning and knowledge creation skills have moved from being an essential in the workplace to being a fundamental skill for life. People regularly access bite-sized information via the web to fulfil an immediate learn-on-demand need in their daily lives. For example, ‘who is...’, ‘when was...’, what is...’, ‘how to...’, ‘where can I...’ are regular queries.
Once the domain of the corporate world, individuals can easily access professionally produced e-learning packages. These are now more affordable due to the global reach and popularity of the best known providers, which has increased income to offset production costs. In addition, providers have miniaturised larger programmes and re-packaged them to produce micro-payment products.
While on the one hand, anyone can become an expert given enough application, more traditional experts are thriving in today’s knowledge society. They help sift the vast quantities of knowledge available to provide guides to what is reliable and synthesise the thinking of others. People today expect to learn for themselves, regularly becoming expert on topics ranging from roses to ‘green’ home building. Ever more hobbies are supported via online global chat forums, websites and wikis.
For the professional, guilds have been re-emerging in various global online forms. Becoming ever more important, these guilds have taken on many responsibilities previously assumed by employers such as sourcing talent, medical insurance, pensions, development and training. People join guilds for continuous professional development and to access opportunities through portals provided by guild networks where work is also traded2.
Public knowledge is continuing to invade the once tightly regulated world of journalism. Citizen reporting began to emerge at the turn of the century and is now a recognised link between traditional media and civic participation. More than simply a news source, citizen media sites fuse news and views. Although privatised, the BBC continues its support of citizen media and ‘Financial View’ is the new pink-edged public contribution website from ‘Financial Times Online’.
A citizen media site often reflects life in a particular geography, typically with a rolling front page where posts go up in blog-like chronological order. Many display professionally produced local coverage originated by paid staff, imported from an owner news site, or by volunteers.
Citizen postings take centre stage on some sites or are relegated to ‘comments’ on others. Sites also feature event calendars, tutorials on how to contribute text and images, local blog feeds, and government and business directories3. The popular website ‘uNooz’ includes poetry, creative writing, gardening, sports, global headlines and vast photo galleries.
1. http://www.meaningprocessing.com/personalPages/tuomi/articles/TheFutureOfLearningInTheKnowledgeSociety.pdf 2005
2. http://www.pwc.co.uk/pdf/managing_tomorrows.pdf 2008
3. http://www.j-lab.org/citizen_media.pdf 02/07
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