"It's getting noisy"

Great post by Konrad Glogowski over on the Blog of Proximal Development.

Whenever I “'enter'” our online community and start clicking my way through all the entries, I feel like I am in a very noisy place. It's like being in a tiny cafe where, around each tiny table, there are conversations that you overhear as you order your latte and check your pockets for change. It feels like a train station, or a concert hall before the lights go down, or your favourite coffee place, or, well, a classroom before the teacher walks in and all the voices stop. Except, when I 'walk in,' the voices don'’t stop. The din continues and the constant hum means that I'm doing something right because they'’re talking, they'’re writing.

I like his comparisons between online, aka non-traditional, learning environments and other more traditional, non-traditional learning environments of cafes, train stations, jazz clubs. This supports the reality that learning happens everywhere, not just in classrooms.