Informal learning recognition through a cloud ecosystem Authors: Francisco

Learning and teaching processes, like all human activities, are mediated through the use of tools. Information and Communication Technologies are now widespread within education. Their use in the daily life of teachers and learners affords engagement with educational activities at any place and moment and not necessarily linked to an institution or a certificate. In the absence of formal certification, learning under these circumstances is known as “informal learning”. Although without certification, learning with technology in this way presents opportunities to gather information about a individual’s learning and to present new ways of exploiting their learning. Cloud technologies present ways in which this can be made possible, through new architectures, methodologies and workflows that facilitate the semantic tagging, recognition and acknowledge of informal learning activities. The transparency and accessibility cloud services means that institutions and learners can exploit existing knowledge to their mutual benefit. The TRAILER project facilitates this task by providing a technological framework using cloud services, a workflow and a methodology. The services facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge associated with informal learning activities ranging from the use of social software through ‘widgets’, computer gaming, and ‘remote laboratory’ experiments. Data from these activities is shared among institutions and learners/workers., etc. The project demonstrates the possibility of gathering information related to the informal learning activities independently of the contexts or tools used to carry them out.