Microlearning2007 Conference Website

The Microlearning Conferences are about new forms of learning emerging in the microcontent-based digital media environments.

Microcontent is the kind of (very) small pieces (quite) loosely joined that emerged in the last five years, in the Web as well as in the mobile/cellular sphere. As "microcontent"is breaking free from macro-sized silos to form new, much more loosely coupled formats and structures, old forms of e-learning, of knowledge management, and of information acquisition must fail.

The buzzwords of the last 5 years - like Smartmobs, Google Galaxy, Blogosphere, Web 2.0, Semantic Web ... - all point to one fundamental phenomenon:
microcontent circulation and micromedia environments.

Microlearning2007 is looking at the underlying structures, and asks for the consequences of these developments for individual and organizational knowledge:

The office workplace is dissolving, and so is the traditional classroom. Walls are falling, borders are blurring, spaces are opening.

New digital technologies and accompanying cultural practices are pulverizing static offline macrocontent, transforming it into clouds and clusters of digital chunks of microcontent - meme-sized, heavily annotated and extremely hyperlinked.

New knowledges are not based on archived documents and the individual human memory anymore. Knowledge structures are taking shape for shorter time-spans and in concrete situations, before melting back into the all-pervasive digital environment.

How can we understand and make use of these new dynamic knowledge structures? How can we create new information architectures? How can we design new learning environments, learning paths and learning experiences for the new media and information environments?

Four thematic focal points will be approached from the micro-perspective:

[1] Mobile Web 2.0: Possible uses for education, knowledge and information

[2] Micro-environments: Transformations of knowledge through digital microcontent & Web 2.0 micromedia

[3] Classroom Without Walls: The impact of micromedia and micolearning on courses, learners and teachers

[4] Corporate (Micro-)Learning for the "Information Workplace 2.0": How learning, training and knowledge aquisition must change