Ahhh
I’ve just arrived back in the country after my three weeks of trekking in Nepal (more about that soon!) and am frantically trying to catch up on all the reading and emails etc I have before me.

An article titled E-Learning 2.0 by Stephen Downes that appears in the eLearn Magazine caught my eye as it seems to have particular relevance to the work I’ve come back to do at the Ministry of Education.

Stephen claims that e-learning is evolving with the World Wide Web as a whole and it’s changing to a degree significant enough to warrant a new name: E-learning 2.0. His article goes on to provide a very useful overview of eLearning developments and trends, before going on to describe what he sees are the characteristics of eLearning 2.0

In a nutshell, what is happening, according to Downes, is that the Web was shifting from being a medium, in which information was transmitted and consumed, into being a platform, in which content is created, shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along. He cites the use of blogs, wikis, podcasting and vlogging etc as evidence of this.

For those new (and not so new!) to the field of eLearning, or those interested in the future trends and directions of eLearning, this article is a must-read. It travereses a raft of related issues, including learning objects, social software, communities of practice etc, and is packed full of links to references and sources of information on the web.

Thanks to Stephen for making this available – you can read what other readers have to say about it on Stephen’s website.