Downes on Learning and Web 2.0

I just found, via David Wilcox, a video presentation made by Stephen, in which he talks about how Web2.0 opportunities can help to develop your own learning process.

Three important things (among all the other interesting things said):

1. You are at the center of your own personal learning network: Sounds obvious, but it has strong implications in our minds. When I htink about learning, I'm supposed to think about MY needs, MY interests, and not those suggested/imposed externally (curricula, undesirable work, etc.). This has all to do with studying, working and doing what is really important for me. It becomes a very transcendental issue, because in order to exploit my full potential as a learner, I have to be doing what makes sense to me. In the end, it's not about my teachers, my employers or even my family or friends. It's about ME. Very humanistic lesson...
2. To gain from self-directed learning you must be self-directed: This is in line with the previous point. If someone/something else than myself is proposing my interests, I won't be able to exploit my own full potential as learner. Then again, it is REALLY complicated for many of us to behave in a self-directed way. And this kind of behavior has to do not only with learning, but with our role as citizens and part of a community. A self-directed individual will have a stronger voice and a stronger critical sense. Sadly, many of our formal education settings are structured to diminish that self-directed behavior.
3. These principles should guide how we teach as well as how we learn: I keep thinking about how often we, as teachers, refer to our students as if they were "study subjects". "The students these days are like this", "The students these days are like that". And we identify a lot of characteristics of these students, but we forget to see that we are supposed to have those characteristics in order to be functional learners in this world. Only when we, as teachers, start to behave like real long life learners, it will be clear what are we supposed to do as teachers, in order to foster and cultivate our students' abilities.

Here´s the video:

Now I'm kind of curious about how Stephen made appear that video window... It's clear that it is on a Powerpoint presentation but, was that in real time, or edited? Hmmmm...