This post is about part of my H800 course with the OU. We are asked:

1. What is your experience of being a learner? The question implies a separate state that I do not accept. My learning is now inextricably linked to the rest of me and is not separable. Technology has for me cut the restraints of time and place that used to confine learning: this is about emancipation perhaps.

2. What tools and resources do you use? Click on the link that is above and you will see my crude attempt. Again we seem to be asked to separate learning form other activities, but I do not do this in life. I sit here at my laptop watching preparations for YMG and completing course materials and playing a game in the background, and just checking on the weather for a trip later today…multitasking merges our worlds and our landscapes

3. What are your views on different technologies?

I found them difficult to group and was surprised by home many tools I used. No wonder that I have so little time…no wonder that this course is in a perpetual state of catching up.

I think that we have an increasing choice of tools that are easier and friendlier to access, can anyone remember using JANET?

4. Can you think of examples where technology has made a significant difference to the way you learn?

My learning is more diffuse, merged in with other aspects of my life and moving seemingly without much effort from the formal to the informal. I am freed to learn whenever and wherever I wish. I am bereft if cut from the net and go to some length to reconnect. I would find it hard to afford the cost and time involved in studying for my Masters if it involved going to Milton Keynes. I would have to spend time in the library stacks locating, reading and note taking. Technology has set me free. What about you?

We are then asked to go on and explore bad experiences, but I am not sure I can think of any apart from my frustratingly slow and old desktop in my seminar room. I resort to prayer, brute force and lots of restarts. I would be interested to hear about anyone who finds technology impedes learning.