At the yearly conference of the Austrian association for trainers in basic education for adults, I gave the opening key-note this year, as the theme was web literacy. The conference, titled Zukunft Basisbildung, was hosted at the Joanneum university for applied sciences in Graz, where Heinz Wittenbrink is teaching web literacy and on-line journalism. We’ve known each other for years, and every now and then he kindly involves me in some of his interesting work.

It’s been a while since I talked in an education oriented setting, and the first time it was about the question what net savviness should be part of the very basic skills of adults for whom reading and writing is already an obstacle. I focussed the talk around how my own learning has evolved over time, towards a fully networked learning style, which tools play a role in that, and how I make sense of that evolution.

My key point, that network awareness should be more central in how we look at social media and web tools in general, as the tools will be different next year and in two years, seemed to go over well. Also that ‘network awareness’ is something that can be maybe more easily become part of ‘basic education’ for adults as it builds on the very core of how we humans interact socially. It just applies those skills in a bit more purposeful manner, steered by a stronger dose of self-reflection.

We need this type of learning more than ever, as we find ourselves in complex situations much more often than before (due to our increased global connectedness and resulting speed and information abundance). There lineair learning styles don’t work (codifying knowledge, learning by absorbing theory, practice in artificial settings, then apply) for lack of predictability in complexity, and therefore we need to rely more on learning by probing and doing. My experience at Rotterdam University and primary schools in my region, as well as the courses I thought at the local university, suggests that a more exploratory learning path, that includes other stakeholders (students, other teachers, professionals, etc.) not just means co-creation of the learning experience but also by default leads to more authentic learning settings: probing the real world.

My talk is available on video, it is in German how-ever. My slides are available and embedded below.