review by Hagel
notes :
vast amts of info + deep personal motivation = unexpected, unplanned, innovative use of space
public & info based + personal & structured = same
started to see the difference between learning & being taught (Doug's college students when gaming) p. 32
much like peter/cristian, who say almost daily, i want to learn everything, on youtube even, like it's a new experience for them, this learning thing, we've all experienced so much of being taught.
a mechanistic view - steps to gain mastery = efficiency
an environment/organism view - unexpected results = thrivability
limited knowledge of result is good - so you don't interfere with the process,
it's the process itself that is interesting
not necessarily fixing a problem in ed, rather growing a solution
adapt: culture is the environment, you teach about, you prove you know info
create: culture emerges from the environment, you learn from engagement within, you change info
Heraclitus - no man ever steps in the same river twice..
well - used to be river was going slow enough that we kind of could, but no way today.
70 yrs for 1 thing - color tv, 10 yrs for for everything - on internet
tech is no longer simply a fast way to transmit info, it's a participatory medium that is always changing
wikipedia makes change visible, britanica just as erroneous, but wikipedia allows us to read across time, britanica forced choices of inclusion/exclusion, excludes then invisible
today - we are not stable/constant - which that allows for more play
play is a strategy for embracing change, as opposed to a way to grow out of it
we need to marry structure and freedom
give a man a fish and feed him for a day.
teach a man to fish, and feed him as long as the fish supply holds out.
but create a collective, and every man will learn how to feed himself for a lifetime.
collective is the medium for participation, for peer to peer learning, and once they can no longer do so, their can simply cease to exist
(in most basic sense: a group constantly playing with and reimagining its own identity)
community: learn in order to belong - about belonging
collective: belong in order to learn - about participation
on p. 54 brown and thomas write:
at this point one might be tempted to ask how we might harness the power of these peer-to-peer collectives to meet some learning objective. but that would be falling into the same old twentieth-century trap. any effort to define or direct collectives would destroy the very thing that is unique and innovative about them.
public vs private
the boundary between the two are becoming more permeable
personal is diff than private, and public implies scale and anonymity, collective is narrower than that
is public vs private really the best way to distinguish anymore?
because you have selected your collective, sharing something personal with a collective is very diff than taking something private and going public with it
throughout life, people continuously learn things they have personal interest in, those things are rarely acknowledged in ed environments.
classrooms are predicated on the sense of the private and the public
transmit info in a public way to the private minds of the students
why student called on can't answer even if they know answer, they've been asked to go public with what had just before been private
what makes Kiva work is not a traditional community but the participatory nature of a collective - there is not a learning objective, nor a right or wrong way to do things, free to play and imagine businesses ina space they never had before
Richard Light's revelation of study groups
to many - learning must be difficult and directed by others, otherwise it threatens academic integrity.
but actually, groups where students can do whatever they want, where learning can even appear easy or fun, collectives can encounter more theories and applications than they ever could in a classroom, following passions/desires in fruitful ways
Michael Polanyi's - The Tacit Knowlegde
in a world of exponential change, focus exclusive to explicit is no longer viable
tacit grows through personal experience and experimentation - it's not transferable - you can't teach it to me, though i can still learn it.
tacit happens not only in the brain but through all the senses of the body - experiential and cognitive
it's not about being taught, but of absorbing
because our mind/bodies/senses are always learning, we pick up vast amounts of tacit knowledge just by going about everyday activities
understanding and knowledge are shaped to a far greater degree by tacit than they ever could by explicit, esp in a world of constant change
different people when presented with exactly the same info in exactly the same way learn diff things. most ed has no room for this, so eliminates student imagination
students learn best when able to follow passion and operate w/in constraints of a bounded environment.
??not following this. they say,
w/o the boundary of an assignment there would be no medium for growth.i'll have to come back to this..
most kids don't know how to answer.. what are you most passionate about, never asked that before, or, they have come to believe that if they care about it that much it's not valid for ed
p. 81 - saying that if you give a kid the internet and tell them to seek their passion, they would meander around finding bits and pieced of info that move them from topic to topic and produce a very haphazard result.
(that's what these guys need, they need detox, time to meander, no? we've caged them up for too long
if we let them meander more maybe they would find their true passion to play in vs a virtual game - not saying for everybody, are you saying gaming would be for everybody? if given the option, i would want to do something real.)
know, make, play
on know: facts have become things that can be located, so the question moves from what to where, where allows for a multiplicity and sophistication of response, more a question of where that question means something than what an isolated answer is - the increasing importance of context
expertise is less about having a stockpile of info/facts at one's disposal, more about how to find/evaluate info on a given topic (conrad wolfram's computer based math)
on make: where one chooses to post, where on links to or where one is linked from does not just serve as a locus for finding content. it becomes part of the content itself
learning content through making - still concerned with the what
learning content through shaping - concerned with the where
both cultivate imagination - basis for play
by participating in the making of meaning, we learn how to judge and eval
in a world where images/texts/meanings can be manipulated, awareness of the play of context and ability to reshape it become important in decision making
on play: huszinga, play is most overlooked aspect in understanding how learning functions in culture
all systems of play a- are at base - learning systems
play reveals a structure of learning that is radically diff from the one most schools provide, and which is well suited to the notions of a world in constant flux
play provides opp to leap, experiment, fail, and continue to play with diff outcomes, it's an organizing principle.
the nature of epiphany - finding that meaning could not happen w/o the playfulness of mind
how one arrives at the epiphany is always a matter of the tacit
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