monika’s w e b l o g

Some lecturers define major keywords and key-themes around microlearning in the course of their presentations:

- Microcontent is described by Arnaud Leene (The Micromedia Revolution) as: focussed – structured (edited: 10.06.2006) – self contained – indivisable – adressable
- and qualities of it by David Smith (Learning in Micromedia environments: Vision, Possibilities, Problems): reusable, remixable – free to separate and form new patterns – small pieces are loosely joined – aggregation and syndication – new sociological possibilities (social software)
- He describes microlearning as: informal learning – gaining knowledge in Microcontent and Micromedia|Multitasking environments
- and the activities with the read-write web (after Will Richardson): Weblog – Wiki – RSS – Agrregator – Social bookmarking – online photo galleries – online radio and video casting.
- Micromedia is introduced by Martin Lindner (“Micro Buzz Honey. A Stimulating Verbal Blend”), when he questions why people would want to do so many things with their cell phones – the micro web is the casual web. He refers to Lev Manovich who says that “While some media forms get richer, others stay purposefully ‘poorer.’ A more minimalist kind of media, characterized by low resolution, low fidelity, and slow speeds, is born. I call it micro-media. Despite the continuous evolution of computer and telecommunication technologies, micro-media is remarkably stable. It just keeps moving from platform to platform, from one technology to another.” (http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?articleid=7129)

Thoughts:
I haven’t really – and that was perhaps one of my major motivations to attend this conference – used “micro”- terms in my research reflections before, even if I did reflect on learning with weblogs, creation of-learning with-exchange of small units of contents. A few new words are starting a whole new process of thinking.

Appendix (01.Sept.2006)
In the Wikipedia definition of Microcontent (on 01.Sept.2006) Anil Dash is mentioned as being the first to introduce the term microcontent.

June 9th, 2006. von Administrator.
Kategorie: conferences. .