Information != Learning

At the "Advancing ADL through Global Collaboration", the first day of presentations seemed to focus on information and information management. We have demos of re-purposing S1000D (which is an international standard for technical publication utilising a common source database) data into SCORM training material and Cordra - a software which supports federated search.

I don't think there is anyone in the Forum who would say that "information" IS "learning". So, why is the skewed emphasis of information management. Afterall, ADL stands for "advanced distributed learning", so shouldn't we be talking more about learning, or distributed learning? We are implicitly equating information, or information delivery as learning?

OK, here are people interesting in "learning technology", or should it be "learning-enabling technologies"? If it is the latter, I would argue that the technology to support managing information is a key technology in supporting learning.

It is very important for learning technologists, me included, to remind ourselves continuously that we should not think we can teach because we have been taught. Airplane passengers can't fly an airplane, so people who has been students should not assume that we can teach, or help others to learn.

Tags: learning