This video gives an overview of Timeless Lifeskills learning module titled ‘Next Generation Educated Person’ available here – http://timelesslifeskills.co.uk/changing-context/4

What is a Learning Theory?

How do humans construct meaning and what motivates us to learn is what learning theories postulate. As our understanding of ourselves changes, be it because of advances in neural science, psychology, sociology, or changes in the environment like availability of abundant information or threat to our very survival, our view of ‘why’ and ‘how’ of learning also changes, leading to new learning theories being postulated.

Why is it important to understand Learning Theories?

Understanding of evolution of our thinking on ‘why’ and ‘how’ we learn prepares us to better adapt to the changing environment and can help us make the world a better place, while living a more fulfilled life ourselves.

Following are some thoughts based on cognitive processing theories:

My thoughts on ‘Thought Leadership’, especially in the context of education.

Leadership is about influencing others and in the case of Thought Leadership in Education, I believe, it is about influencing others with your ideas of constitutes good education.

This thinking has direct bearing on me because I am keen on influencing others about how the information technology revolution has placed us in the midst of a paradigm shift, just like advent of language, writing and printing-press had earlier done, that requires us to reconsider what is relevant education and how it should be imparted and learnt.

Thought leadership in education need not be coercive leadership or a leadership that influences others through economic inducement rather, in my view, thought leadership has much to borrow from ‘soft power’.

Ideally the platform should have these features built-in, but there are always new third-party tools coming up that perform these functions better. Hence, either the platform should have the capability to integrate new third-party tools.

Even without a learning platform that provides these features, learner can use use tools like Diigo and features like ‘hashtag’ collation and sharing to bring coherence in a learning experience. For example, I could use the StickyNote or Annotation feature of Diigo, add a hashtag to my note/annotation, and then share the Diigo link with my fellow learners.

I am not sure if Diigo StickyNotes are crawled by Google, if they are then curation for a particular course could be based simply on hashtags.

According to Prof Jared Diamond, author of the book ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’, roots of inequality amongst human societies lie not in superiority of one gene pool over another, instead guns, germs and steel determine inequality.

Natural geographical advantages made agriculture possible in some areas of earth like in the fertile-crescent of the Middle East (Sumerian civilization). Instead of a nomadic way of life of hunting and gathering for food, humans here settled down.

Regions where grains like wheat and rice could grow had an advantage over regions where only perishable crops could grow because grains required less maintenance and they could be stored for long period of time. Less people were thus required for meeting the nourishment needs of a society.