Learning logs through Flickr

Since doing my action research on learning logs through blogs a few years back, I've been hearing great stories from more and more learners and teachers who feel their own practice has improved just by virtue of

• a) writing down explicitly what they think they've learned;
• b) gaining help from peers in comments; and
• c) re-reading progress further down the line and using the experience to see what they have learnt, and what needs more work.

TeacherDude this morning adds to the examples, but he's been finding Flickr useful as a visual learning log. It's true that his photography stream has been one of the few that I subscribe to, not just because he's producing good shots but because he's producing increasing better shots each week. See what he has to say about how his learning log is now helping him improve further.

Comments

[Craig]

Thank you,Ewan for the compliment. The strange thing about things like photography, blogging etc is the thought that teaching is still as important as ever.

There are those who fear that this technology will weaken or make irrelevant the role of the teacher. I would argue that it does nothing of the sort. While I've enjoyed learning how to take photos, I realised that I could have learnt a lot more quickly with the help of a teacher.

The same is true of blogging and the like. I can show my students in 20-30 minutes how to do stuff that took me a week of flaffing around.