Navigating difficult waters in a digital era: Technology, uncertainty and the objects of informal lifelong learning

This paper uses two complementary examples from an autoethnographic study of learning and sailing to explore some connections between informal lifelong learning activities, their objects (purposes) and the hybrid (digital and material) technologies on which they depend. The examples focus on an aspect of the craft of sailing and on understanding the relations between sailing, place and local history. The paper argues that close attention to activities in which people engage can help discover some less visible purposes of learning and can broaden our understandings of situated skills. The paper also argues that being able to find and configure environments suitable for learning are important capabilities for successful lifelong learners. The paper has two additional implications for thinking about research and development in educational technology. First, a technology becomes educational by virtue of its relation to emerging activity, rather than because of any intrinsic physical properties. Second, educational technologies are often assembled in complex meshworks. Understanding how they function involves analysing dynamic relations and interdependencies: listing the affordances of individual components is not enough.Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Across the life course, a good deal of valuable learning is informal, incidental or both. Informal lifelong learning depends upon an ability to monitor and manage one's own learning activity. Informal lifelong learning also depends upon an ability to find useful (digital and other) learning resources. What this paper adds The purposes (objects) of lifelong learning activities are not always evident. They can be ‘discovered’ through inquiry and reflection. Finding useful learning resources is sometimes complex. In some cases, it amounts to constructing and/or reconfiguring a productive learning/epistemic environment. Creating a productive learning or epistemic (knowledge‐making) environment entails assembling and holding together a meshwork of digital, material and hybrid artefacts. Learning ‘in the wild’ can also entail finding the right place for learning: the right spot in a ‘skillscape’. A technology becomes educational by virtue of its relation to activity, rather than through a priori classification or because of its intrinsic features. Implications for practice and/or policy Those who encourage and/or support informal lifelong learning may want to consider the significance of implicit purposes for, and outcomes of, learning activities and may find it helpful to have a richer conception of how learning environments are found and assembled.