XplanaZine

This morning, I decided to take a cab to the airport for my trip back to Oklahoma to see my kids. I had to stop by my office on the way, a four block detour, and the quickest way to catch a cab from there was to walk over to the nearby Sheraton hotel. I walked through the lobby, looking like any other exiting guest I suppose, and the next cab in line pulled up. As soon as I stepped in, the driver said something about the weather, and then he added, “It’s always good to go home, isn’t it?”I realized, of course, that he thought I was a tourist, checking out of my hotel and on my way back to wherever I came from. He didn’t know I lived just around the corner, that my physical home was in the same city as his. Just the same, his question made me consider what home really is, and it made me wonder if I really have one in the same sense that he meant.

I grew up in Texas, spent some quality time in Latin America, went back to Texas for a time, moved to Oklahoma, and have finally started a new stint in Massachusetts. On the one hand, each of those places came to feel like “home.” On the other hand, the part of each of them that is home is less about geography and more about experience and memory. While I have always had a “home base,” my real concept of home has been expanding my whole life. When you get right down to it, home for me is Texas/Mexico/Argentina/Oklahoma/Massachusetts and every memory, relationship, and story tied up with those places. And because home is the collection of these things and not the physical surroundings in which I live, I always carry it with me. It may be manifested, to some extent, in my house or apartment, in the places I actually live, but it is definitely a “mobile” reality and always has been.

I’ve been talking a lot recently about learning and technology, sharing core concepts of human learning and trying to explain why LMS platforms as we know them will disappear. In the end, the simplest way to explain the recent and future evolutions of learning and technology may be just to talk about “home.” Just as the understanding of home evolves naturally from house –> house + relationships and experiences — > relationships + experiences + memories, our vision for learning and technology has developed on a similarly parallel path: LMS platform –> e-learning framework + learner content and learner interaction –> learner content + learner interaction + memories.

When we started putting learning materials and even some of our classes online in the late 90’s, we did so with an understanding that learning was driven by logistics and physical contact with people. This was the reality of our brick-and-mortar education systems and we translated that concept into technology. We built large LMS platforms that were self-contained learning environments (much like the classroom), added a teacher presence (much like the classroom), and deemed it as good.

As our technologies and our understanding of learning continued to evolve, we moved into our present and near-future state of affairs. The old, self-contained LMS platform is passing away and in its place is the concept of a learning framework. This e-learning framework provides much of the same functionality as the old LMS platforms, but it is a “open” concept” that views learning as more than a place with a certain person or certain people present. With the new framework model, learners are able to benefit from experiences and content outside of the framework (in this case, blogs, wikis, and everything else associated with Web 2.0), and to share those with people using the framework as well as others who are not. In other words, the e-learning framework model begins to erase the notion of equating learning to a particular place or, in this case, a particular technology.

Where we are headed next is even more exciting. In the next phase of evolution, we will cease to think of learning as tied to any location or single physical technology like an LMS. In this phase, content itself will be intelligent, distributable virtually anywhere, and interoperable across almost all software and hardware appliance types. Learning will be purely about content and our experiences and memories related to that content, while technology will be more of a hidden set of conduits for those materials, interactions, and memories. Technology will be one of many learning preferences that I can select. I will be able to work on my math or reading skills (with identical content and behavior) alone, with a teacher, with other students, on a phone, on a computer, in my car, on a plane, in my house, or, yes, in a classroom.

As we move from the e-learning framework phase into the content phase, technology won’t decrease or be less important, it will simply be focused on a different understanding of what learning really is. Of course, along the way our content will need to be smarter and more interoperable across foreseeable and unforeseeable hardware and software appliances. And people will also have to evolve in their understanding of learning, just as I have evolved in my understanding about home. Learning is not something we can ever leave behind or return to. It is truly a mobile reality, traveling with us wherever we are and wherever we’re going. It always has been and always will be.