What I love about 21st century learning

This is one of those somewhat arbitrary posts, tangentially related to the topic.

One of the things that excites me about learning now, versus when I was at school or my parents were at school is just how accessible everything and everyone is. One just has to be slightly motivated to want to know something, have access to high speed internet and the world is literally your oyster.

I have a brother with ADHD and I have a son with ADHD. Their learning worlds could not be more different.  If my son struggles with a textbook or a mathematically concept or wants to learn something but the books available are too hard for him, he has so many other options. He can go onto Kahn Academy. He can search for youtube tutorials, he can Skype and chat to a friend or relative.  And of course, if your attempts at getting information are so richly rewarded, you are much more motivated as a learner to keep learning.

And now my experience. When writing my last blog post I was interested in Dr. Francus’ talk, and dug out her contact details and asked her for a transcript.  Unlike my son, I prefer reading text to watching a video.  She replied right back to me, and then even went to the trouble of reading my blog post and writing a very thoughtful reply to me, confirming my suspicion that the best part of interactive media is to be interactive while it unfolds rather than in retrospect.

When I was growing up in South Africa, which then felt like the back of the beyond and may as well have been another planet, not just another country due to its self-imposed and sanction imposed isolation, I could never envisage a reality where an author or person of note would enter a dialogue with a learner.  That is today’s wonderful reality, there for the taking.  And digital literature is just a small part of it all!