In an era of globalization and “flattening” of our relatiohships around the Earth, how can we learn better? What happened to learning as we moved from the stable structures of the 20th century to fluid and amorphic structures of the 21st century? What roles do schools and colleges play when you can learn in any context and at any time? Do we continue with formal learning or do we formalize informal learning?

This is an open invitation to explore some of the best ideas emerging around the planet that are contributing to a new ecology of learning.

More info: www.invisiblelearning.com

(Note: Conversation alternates between Spanish and English.)Картини

About a year ago, Cristóbal Cobo and I announced a research project called Invisible Learning. After many months of work, collecting experiences, researching literature, interviews, and exchanges with experts (and –above all– many hours of writing), we can announce that in 2011 the Invisible Learning book will be a reality (in print and digital formats).

Details about the upcoming book, Invisible Learning: Toward a new ecology of education, are available at http://invisiblelearning.com — and, because we will first publish in Spanish, the website is (for now) in Spanish. We will roll out an English edition of the website and book later in 2011.

The project has exceeded all of our expectations. Not only in terms of interest (over 15,000 references in Google, 7,500 TEDx video playbacks in Spanish and many as well in English), but in the scope of contributions from universities and researchers in the United States, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Finland. We view this as a global commitment (Western, at least) to take a transnational perspective on education at all levels.

The ingredients from these sources are combined in this work to build a large map of ideas, proposals, experiences, tools, methodologies, and research frameworks that seek to make visible those invisible components that lie behind learning. This text seeks out new questions about learning for the upcoming decades.

Although the text has a critical perspective, resulting from the analysis of the shortcomings of educational systems, it also seeks to highlight innovative and transformative initiative that are launching in various corners of the globe.

We do not offer magical fixes for the problems identified, but we assemble the pieces of a conceptual puzzle, constructed from: Society 3.0; lifelong learning; the use of technologies outside of the classroom; soft skills; methodologies for building education futures; serendipic discovery; the hybridization between formal and informal learning; skills for innovation; edupunk and edupop; expanded education; digital maturity; Knowmads and knowledge agents; plus many new literacies relevant to the times in which we live.

We believe that the vested interest and the support provided by dozens of collaborators and institutions such as the Laboratori de Mitjans Interactus (LMI) at the University of Barcelona (publisher) are a living demonstration of the deep interest that exists for building a better education for tomorrow. Hugo Pardo, editor and the publisher’s tireless engine of this book provides some insight on his blog. We will write more about this project and its “added values” as it approaches publication. Stay tuned!

Much of the recent conversation has been on defining what is invisible learning, and whether we need invisible learning in an already crowded ecosystem of ideas. For example, in a comment posted at Blog Nodes Ele, Juan M. Fernández wrote:

Están bien todas estas propuestas pero por momentos tengo la sensación de que están cayendo en una retórica autocomplaciente y poco práctica. ¿Dialogan entre ellas o prefieren ignorarse? ¿No ha llegado el momento de tomar alguna de estas propuestas y desarrollarla?

He is right. Nobody should get self-congratulatory about adding new ideas or terminologies to an already crowded ecology of conceptualizations. What I feel is important, however, is how we approach the interconnectedness and blending of many of the key ideas and concepts that, to a great extent, were isolated. This is why invisible learning is valuable:

Invisible learning includes not only non-formal and informal education, but also addresses the need to recognize, understand and leverage the essential meta space between non-formal/informal education and formal education. Moreover, as Cristóbal Cobo points out, invisible learning is also inclusive of new social and cultural interfaces within this new paradigm of learning (i.e., edupunk). This means that we do not need to rely on new technologies to teach old ideas, but rather we can fuel new learning by tapping into our inherent imagination, creativity and innovation capacities that thrive in invisible learning’s spectrum of possibilities.