User Generated Content - Definition Wikipedia.org

online content which is procuded by users of websites
reflects the democratisation of media production through new technologies which are accessible and affordable (digital video, bloggin, podcasting, mobile phone photography, wikis)
Flickr, Wikipedia

What is Informal Learning?

Cross, Jay (2006). What is informal learning? Retrieved May 22, 2006 from http://internettime.com/wordpress2/?p=551

Informal learning is like riding a bicycle: the rider chooses the destination and the route. The cyclist can take a detour at a moment's notice to admire the scenery or help a fellow rider
Formal learning is like riding a bus: the driver decides where the bus is going; the passengers are along for the ride. People new to the territory often ride the bus before hoppint on the bike.
training is something that's pushed on you; learning is something your choose.
Conversations are the stem cells of learning, for they both create and transmit knowledge. Open conversation increases innovation.
Formal learning takes place in classrooms; informal learning happens in learnscapes. A learnscape is a learning ecology: learning without borders.

Technology and Learning Expectations of the Net Generation

Roberts, Gregory R. (2005). Technology and Learning Expectations of the Net Generation. In: Oblinger, Diana G. & Oblinger, James L. (Eds.). Educating the Net Generation

Higher education often talks about Net Generation's expectations for the use of technology in their learning environments. However, few efforts have been made to directly engage students in a dialogue about how they would like to see faculty and their institutions use technology to help students learn more effectively.
Students views on technology

The definition of technology is not confided to computers or the Internet. Technology is viewed as any electronically based application or piece of equipment that meets a need to access to information or communication.
Customization is central to the definition of technology for Net Geners. Technology is something that adapts to their needs, not something that requires them to change.

These three themes pose interesting questions for colleges and universities:

How will institutions define and develop technology-enabled learning when students view technology as encompassing a wide range of mobile options beyond the tradtitional classroom
Do student expectations regarding technology and customization constitute a barrier to effective teaching and learning with technology?
What does it mean when students consider an institution's 'advanced technology' as 'so yesterday'?

Connecting the Digital Dots

Jones-Kavalier, Barbara R. & Flannigan, Suzanne L. (2006). Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century. In: Educause Quaterly, 29 (2), 8-10.

Literacy today depends on understanding the multiple media that make up our high-tech
reality and developing the skills to use them effectively.
Current generation of teenagers possesses digital competencies to effectively navigate
the multidimensional and fast-paced digital environment.
In our 21^st century society – accelerated, media-saturated, and automated – a new literacy
is required, one more broadly defined than the ability to read and write.
Digital and visual literacies are the next wave of communication specialization. Most people will have technologies at their fingertips not olny to communicate but to create, to manipulate, to design, to self-actualize. Children learn these skills as part of their lives, like language, which they learn without realizing they are learning it.
The senior population approaches the new literacy like a foreign language that is complex and perhaps of questionable use.
A common scenario today is a classroom filled with digitally literate students being led by linear-thinking, technologically stymied instructors.
To approach the use of technology differently, to enhance teaching and learning across all departments, requires change.
Our students are natives of cyberspace - they are digitally savvy. No longer does it suffice for a teacher to retype overheads into PowerPoint and have students take notes.
These days, new media literacy technical skills catapult traditional learning methods into orbit
The greatest challenge is moving beyond the glitz and pizzazz of the flashy technology to teach true literacy in this new milieu.
Our world today is about connecting the digital dots. The challenge is in dealing with the complexity
Digital literacy represents a person's ability to perform tasks effectively in a digital environment
Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, sound, images), to reproduce data and images through ditial manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments.
Visual literacy, referred to at times as visual competencies, emerges from seeing and integrating sensory experiences. Focused on sorting and interpreting - sometimes simultaneously - visible actions and symbols, a visually literate person can communicate information in a variety of forms and appreciate the masterworks of visual communication.
Visually literate individuals have a sense of design - the imaginative ability ot create, amend, and reproduce images, digital or not, in a mutable way.