Seamless and Ubiquitous Learning
This post is in response to the topic of Established and Emerging Trends in Online Learning.
The question this post is responding to is:
"Did you ever have experiences of seamless and/or ubiquitous learning? What were the contexts and circumstances? Can you describe what you feel you have learned?"
The article examining ubiquitous learning mentioned in the following post, can be found here.
This is my response:
As others have mentioned, the differentiation between seamless and ubiquitous learning is not particularly clear in my mind. I think part of this has to do with the lack of examples that were given in the articles that we read. It seems as if ubiquitous learning may be a part of seamless learning? However, both of these concepts still seem to exist in a bit of a theoretical framework as opposed to the real world at least for the time being. I can think of a pertinent example where I have witnessed seamless learning taking place in an elementary classroom which I think relates to this case.
I had the opportunity to assist in my nephew's classroom when he was in 2nd grade (he was 7 or 8 years old). During the class, the teacher was doing a session on community during which she put Google Maps up on the projector and the class collectively found where their school was located on the map. The teacher then asked if any students could remember their address and the class found on the map the area where different students lived in relation to where the school was located. After the class, my nephew and I were driving home and he was talking about Google Maps and asking lots of questions about it, so i gave him my phone and he was able to figure out not only how to pull up Google Maps but also how to follow the GPS directions to show us how to drive home. Even though I knew the route very well myself, my nephew would tell me when I should turn and in which direction. This is similar to the example in the YouTube video of The Big Bang Theory that was linked as extra material for this week's session, so that video made me laugh even harder because of my experience with my nephew. In this case, he was learning in class several things: how to look at and read a map; geographical and spacial orientation and technology manipulation skills. Then, in the car, he was able to put those skills to practical use and figure out himself how to get Google Maps to work and how to orient himself between one familiar place and another. This practical application of a tool he had learned in class, allowed him to have seamless learning that was supplemented in both formal and informal ways.
Instead of addressing the second question, I would like to instead address a part of ubiquitous learning that I found to be extremely problematic and deeply concerning to the point where I feel compelled to bring it up in this response to the article on Ubiquitous Learning by Kinshuk and Sabine Graff (see link above for article). In it they mention, "The ultimate aim of ubiquitous learning research is to find ways to immerse the learner in the environment in such a way that the learning would simply happen, automatically and in such small amounts, that it would not even be noticeable"
This is a particularly frightening thought as I believe that if people lose their cognition of learning, they become susceptible to false and inaccurate information and potentially brainwashing. In my opinion, the ability to critically reflect on learning and information is crucial to being able to understand the world and form your own opinions and understanding based on facts and substantiated information. If learning becomes unconscious and unnoticeable, it is my fear that people will ultimately lose the ability to think for themselves and the ability to question their environment, the information input and the things they are being told. This is troublesome especially in an age where fake news and fake information are rampant and one can find nearly any information on the internet to support even erroneous information and statistics. If the aim of ubiquitous learning research is to make all learning unconscious, then i cannot support this to any degree.
My nephew (far right), his siblings, and myself (far left) (many years after the described event above):
