#LearningIs everywhere

Photo from Pexels

It seems like a cliché, but it's true. Everywhere you look, everywhere you go, whatever you do, whatever the time of the day, you will encounter learning opportunities. How often have you discovered something new and thought - well... I never knew that! Often learning is incidental or serendipitous. Learning is so naturally a part of being alive, we are not always aware we are doing it.

Certainly we can set out deliberately to learn something new, either on a formal or informal basis. We can enrol on a course, or we can trawl the web. Learning experiences in a formal education course will be different to learning from our informal autodidactic efforts. Although we learn naturally, and learning is a process - a series of events - deliberate learning is caused by curiosity, a desire to discover more.

Schools, colleges and universities were established as attempts to harness these natural propensities and locate them in formal contexts. Concepts such as curriculum, classes, assessment, lessons and 'teaching' are artificial - contrivances that do not occur naturally. They have been devised because institutions require structures, with the intention to optimise teaching and learning. Clearly, optimisation doesn't always follow because sometimes intentions don't align with reality, and not every structure benefits the learner.

Yet for those who are determined to learn something new and significant, technology is playing a key role. Technology provides access for millions to education - something that was previously impossible or extremely problematic. Online programmes of study including MOOCs are still in great demand, and learning through mobile devices is at an all time high. Significantly, although a high percentage of online students do not complete their studies, many students argue that the end product is not as important as the process. In other words, the knowledge and skills learned have more value than the accreditation in many cases.

For many years we dreamed about learning any time, any place. Technology has made this dream a reality for many. We are very privileged to be living in the digital age, where learning opportunities are everywhere, and knowledge is more available than it has ever been.

Photo from getacover.com

#LearningIs everywhere by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.