So after a seamless journey, thanks to Connex, I walked purposefully direction Victoria University, Nicholson campus. I had a vaguely formed notion to drop in to a few African shops to pick up some myrrh (or was it frankincense?) and a burner.
Fathia's gift shop was clos-ed. Oh well, I'll pop by some time again soon.
Then I noticed the bakery selling Injera bread. The polite retailer agreed to sell me half a pack for $4.00 and the contents were quite heavy, probably equivalent to the weight of a medium loaf of bread. I was thrilled to fall upon a consolation prize - equally culturally distinctive and something definitively 'Footscray'. (Where DO our African students purchase their Injera bread?)
Then followed an interesting workshop on web tools for 'promoting learning through collaborative activity' for teachers.
In his prelude to the hands-on discovery of online tools, Colin Lankshear discussed the implications of the evolution of a digital learning culture. He compared it to traditional 'analog' learning cultures, which involve conventional time and spaces (classroom, course programs).
Those of us who persist with developing online PC skills for learning and teaching may become bi-discoursal people - and thereby be able to reflect critically on both learning cultures.
Digital learning is typically non-accredited, collaborative and following the 'pull' model rather than the 'push' model. It necessitates crowd sourcing - something we witnessed Sue Waters demonstrating last week at ConVerge08. She called upon her virtual network at Twitter to answer a question from the floor and within an hour there were half a dozen responses from her expansive network of 'followers' to assist her.
Colin's prelude was, in fact, the perfect reflective epilogue to ConVerge08.
Much later we explored the various ways of consuming injera with ready to go Indian curries: rolling them up in the injera like in a crepe/ dosai or tearing off bits and using it as an eating tool to grab bite-size bits of curry - yum!
