Take charge of your learning with Web 2.0

Terrance Online is this post points to a great 20 minute video from Stephen Downes about making use of Web 2.0 tools to take charge of your own learning.

Who it is pitched at is a bit confusing. It is pitched at teachers in some areas and then at students in others.

A couple of quick things that stick for me

1. Don't try to remember stuff. Focus on having quality information flows. IF you have these quality sources then you are likely to be hit with similiar concepts and information in a variety of ways and from a variety of angles that you end up retaining the important things anyway
2. Filter ruthlessly. A lot of stuff coming through in my subscriptions to email lists and RSS feeds gets a quick glance. Sometimes it doesn't even get a glance except for the subject line. Sometimes, down the track I discover that there is a sort of thread happening, a buzz. I can use the search facilities to go back to these posts that I skimmed and get the detail if I choose.
3. Shun traditional classes. Just in time learning is the go. How do I resolve this for myself as a teacher? In my last post I pointed to a Community Studies syllabus and how this helped create a useful learning environment where a traditional syllabus statement in Information Technology did not. It still appears to be a traditional class. With schools the way that they are it is difficult to conceive how I might be able to go much further than this.