Quotes of relevance

I’ve been revisiting some old articles/books that I collected when I was researching autonomy, self-access and language learning. This one from Gill Sturtridge seemed to have relevance to current discussions of informal learning, and open access in general.

The information explosion, information technology and increasing student numbers may not only mean the integration and acceptance of self-access centres within the traditional classroom-based teaching institution, but also the complete re-assessment of the mode of delivery of education generally. Institutions could become total providers of self-access learning and the traditional classroom could disappear entirely in some institutions” (1997, p. 68).

Sturtridge, G. (1997). Teaching and learning in self-access centres: changing roles? in P. Benson and P.Voller (eds): Autonomy and Independence in Language Learning. London: Longman.

Workshopping

I’ve been busy over at http://testingcentre.wordpress.com, pulling a bunch of stuff together for a workshop on creating successful online learning environments. The problem with this topic is that so much good stuff has been said on the topic already, and I feel like I’m adding very little to the noise. My hope is that the participants will guide the workshop, since I’m quite prepared to go off in any direction that is needed.

Of course, in preparation for the workshop I found a couple of good new tools to add to the mix: PollDaddy  for quick student polls and Tangler , a non-US hosted discussion board.