For ages and even today in many places traditional pedagogical practices are prevalent where students are the consumers of knowledge. They just memorize the content. By rethinking education and due to our efforts to bring innovation in education we have started providing opportunities to investigate and search for relevant information, exchange information, sharing with a larger community and extending ones’ own learning using Digital technologies. All this becomes possible when we use Web 2.0 technologies such as online sources, cloud spaces, social networks or blogs.

The shift is from students being consumers of knowledge to being producers of knowledge. Kalantzis (2000) As such; students participate and engage in creating their own knowledge according to their requirement, curiosity and interests. They are more engaged and take ownership of their own learning. Digital technologies ensure personalized learning and cater to inclusion. One of the benefits of cloud spaces is that you can learn through collaboration, we don’t need to work in isolation anymore, we can work as a team in which each participant pitches in with their own diverse strengths and perspectives. One of the affordances of e-learning ecologies is that students are not restricted for time and space while working on a product. As compared to a traditional classroom, they have the freedom to share their own point of view, they have the time to think and contribute detailed information as compared to limited content and the best part of cloud sharing is that all participants can work simultaneously without stepping on each other’s’ toes. When students are provided with opportunities to take ownership of and design their own learning they can be creative and innovative, they need to think critically and make decisions which promotes 21st century learning skills. Participatory learning ensures that students become independent self-directed learners. To ensure that the learning outcomes are met, students in a collaborative and participatory learning environment evaluate their own and each other’s contributions and by reflecting and critically analyzing their work they can further improve the product. In this way students take ownership of their own learning. “Participatory Education is an educational model in which students are given as much of a voice as their instructors or leaders in determining curriculum and activities (Sauve, n.d.). All participants are active in defining their own needs as well as their own desires. Beyond simply defining these goals, all participants work to implement them and then to evaluate the process that they used to achieve said goals.“ Cited from: http://twbonline.pbworks.com/w/page/29052439/Participatory%20Education

Figure 1.1: Some features of participatory learning

Being interested in exploring mountains, I was browsing the web and stumbled upon a blog where mountaineers from all over the world were sharing their experiences of climbing different mountains with photos, information about altitude and the difficulty level of the climb, the routes they tried and the ones to avoid, the resources they took along and what was most useful. They had shared their feelings and day to day itinerary of the experience. Now when I think about it and the opportunities made available by technologies I am awed by the wealth of information available on any topic on the web, contributed by individuals based on their own personal hands-on experience, based on first hand sources of information which could never have been possible without technologies.

Links:

Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures

B Cope, M Kalantzis, Psychology Press

http://idp-key-resources.org/documents/0000/d04267/000.pdf
http://ucowr.org/files/Achieved_Journal_Issues/150/5_Missingham_150.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qspyND3f_V8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbxP1OHqffU&list=PLus49M1GLXago4CSMTAcKltHrlDCxIg5L