As we all work to navigate our new realities, we’re still driven by structures, mandates and paradigms. I don’t say that as being necessarily bad but it’s true. It’s comforting to be careful with language and calling this time “emergency remote learning” is useful. The linked article and others written by folks like AJ Juliani help to frame what’s happening to schools.

But learning is still learning. George Couros’ school vs learning chart highlight many of the paradigms educators are recognizing and working to dismantle. The term online learning has been interpreted as the formal course work that I’ve been involved in for years. When schools talk about online learning, that’s what they mean. But Stephen Downes wrote something that reminded me that we need to be careful with equating online learning with formal education.

It’s a post worth reading as it challenged me with my own bias about online learning. He argues that while this time and place for educators is indeed difficult and less than ideal, it’s important not to define online learning as
being “planned, deliberate and thoughtful in the sense that online courses often take months or even years to develop, not days or … Read the rest