Today, I am writing the final installment of my reflections on "A New Culture of Learning". Here goes nothing.
Chapter 7: Knowing, Making and Playing "The three dimensions of learning--knowing, making, and playing-- are already beginning to emerge within the fabric of the digital world itself: Just look at what kids do today on social network and media sites." Kids innately do these things. As children and then young adults, we engage in play on individual and social levels to test the boundaries of our environments and figure out how to succeed. I think, that as time goes on, oftentimes we are encouraged to value "static" sets of knowledge more than we are encouraged to "play" with our surroundings. With information and situations changing as rapidly as they are in the age of the internet, though, it has become important for us adults to learn how to play again.With more and more people changing careers multiple times, it would make sense that learning to learn again is a valuable skill-set to help us develop and adapt in a fast(er) paced world. Lingering question: the chapter outlines how people join communities and play online. But I wonder: how (or how often) do people do this face to face? Chapter 8: Hanging out, Messing around, Geeking out "Geeking out provides an experiential, embodied sense of learning within a rich social context of peer interaction, feedback, and knowledge construction enabled by a technological infrastructure that promotes intense, autonomous, interest driven learning." By throwing ourselves head first into learning communities and "geeking out", we prove just how valuable the 'tacit' learning aspect of learning is. Peer interaction and feedback help us to figure out how we fit in our surroundings and how we can do our best to succeed in our goals. By developing these healthy interactions with their peers in a learning environment, students learn to value their learning within a context, and, more importantly, they learn to value their own input in these contexts. It is absolutely great when we can connect learning and personal value in the educational experience. Lingering question: how can I bring the same sort of inquiry and value to english that World of Warcraft players have in this book? Chapter 9: A New Culture of Learning for a World of Constant Change "Only when we care about experimentation, play, and questions more than efficiency, outcomes and answers do we have a space that is truly open to imagination. And where imaginations play, learning happens." Genuine learning, as a rule, is recognized to help individuals become better in some way. Experimentation and play, on the other hand, are widely believed to be good ways to spend your free time or effective ways to approach a hobby. They are, as a rule, not to be implemented in institutes of learning. This is a great mistake. To teach children to be innovative, we have to encourage them to approach real-world problems imaginatively. For imagination to occur, we have to encourage experimentation and play and believe that they will result in genuine learning. Lingering question: what types of experimentation and play can occur within the realm of High School English?
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Here is a continuation of my first post about A New Culture of Learning. It'll blow your mind.
Chapter 4: Learning in the Collective "Unlike a classroom where a teacher controls the lecture, the organic communities that emerge through collectives produce meaningful learning because the inquiry that arises comes from the collective itself." In these collectives, it seems that the highest aspiration is for individuals to figure out how to collaborate with one another to push each others' learning to its limit. Because the collective learning environment deals with so many perspectives and all of the unique questions that come with that many perspectives, being an active member of a collective basically guarantees that you are going to be constantly acquiring new knowledge and learning how to efficiently acquire that knowledge. I think that the author's example of college campuses as these types of communities is an effective one. when students all arrive as freshman, nobody knows what is happening. They each bring their own special background knowledge to the equation, but none of them has "real" experience living in dorms or going to college classes, or being truly, fully responsible for themselves. As a result, these freshman band together and figure out how they can best juggle all of their responsibilities. They join clubs, they form study groups, they help each other out in core classes. Their is a myriad of skills they learn in their first year out of the house. This is a direct result of the inquiry that came out of the collective of college freshman on a campus. Lingering question: Where do communities like this exist in our face to face adult lives? Chapter 5: The Personal with the Collective "Learning in an age of constant change simply never stops. In the new culture of learning, the bad news is that we rarely reach any final answers." In the new culture of learning, the personal becomes the public (at least in terms of learning). The authors make a good example when referencing blogs. Blogs (or, the blogosphere if you prefer) are a tight-knit network of personal reflections and learning moments for others to learn from. When we learn collectively, we are learning more from one another's personal lines of questioning than we are from their publicly displayed knowledge. because learners can publish their knowledge continually, and because our interactions as knowledge-seekers generate inquiries, existing knowledge is infinite. People,especially hobbyists, tend to learn more from watching other amateurs learn than they would from watching a professional work. For example: whenever I want to learn a guitar song and I cant quite figure out what to do next, I have a few different collectives I can consult. The first is ultimateguitar.com, which is a collection of transcribed songs (that all have commentary and ratings, as well as several different versions). The second, is youtube. If, for some reason, I cant quite figure out how to play a certain part of a song, I know that someone else has had that trouble, too. I can go spend some time on the internet with the other amateurs and learn everything that they have to offer. Lingering question: I wonder if anyone has ever set up a "skills" board/directory in their classroom for students to be able to consult one another? Chapter 6 we know more than we can say "The twenty-first century..belongs to the tacit. In the digital world, we learn by doing, watching, and experiencing. Generally, people don't take a class or read books or manuals to learn how to use a web browser or email program." Knowledge, especially the kind that is worth acquiring, is rarely from a book or a lecture. Effectively acquiring skills requires ownership of knowledge--The only way to truly own knowledge is to utilize it creative acts. In other words, you don't become a great writer by having someone explain to you how to write great. Learners in the 21st century have literally millions of communities to participate in if they choose, This is where they can gain ownership of their knowledge and practice that tacit aspect of their learning. Lingering question: I'm not quite sure what communities I belong to. what communities do you belong to?
This week I have been reading a pretty sweet book by the name of: A New Culture of Learning. In this series of blog posts, I will be giving you a blow-by-blow of what I, as an aspiring educator, think of the author's ideas and opinions. Spoiler Alert: I agree with them almost across the board.
Matt agrees, too.
Chapter 1: Arc-of-Life learning "...The connection between resources and personal motivation led people to cultivate their imaginations and recreate the space in a new way." I think that the authors really make a good point with all of the examples that they present in this chapter. In all of their examples the authors, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, show how students who collaborate in a completely organic, hands-off environment succeed in teaching one another (and themselves). Students do this by working in ways that teach them how to learn rather than working in one (traditional) way that delivers static information. Although I believe that the education system has worked for me overall, I cant help but feel that I missed out on a lot of real-world type learning because of traditional schools focus on a more 'static' approach. When students possess literally millions of ways to instantly locate, process, and then communicate information at their fingertips, what need is their for memorization of any of it? I think that their is much more value in teaching students about communities and collaboration. As someone who played World of Warcraft for several years, I can tell you that the learning concepts and community aspects presented within these chapters are absolutely true. Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPG) are so much fun to play because of the relationships you build with the people around you. Learning and improvement within the game are motivated by a strong desire to become more successful in your gaming interactions. More often than not, more experienced players help newer players make progress and learn the ropes within these games. They help new players to learn how to navigate all of the ups and downs of in-game economies, scoring systems, fighting styles/classes, and the list goes on. In these first few chapters, our authors begin to build a strong case for the argument that, with the veritable cornucopia of ways to process and decipher incoming information, we need to move away from the 'traditional' school that forces students to memorize static information, and establish a new culture of learning where students can learn to manipulate their education environment in ways that will result in their personal growth. One way in which this seems like it might work is to create a "game" environment where students can all help each other become better in a judgement-free, supportive environment. My lingering question from this chapter is: How can I best implement teaching strategies so that students feel that they are engaging in genuine learning and not "eating their vegetables"?
I don't think that Godzilla was a particularly huge fan of 'Traditional Schooling'.
Chapter 2: A tale of two cultures "Encountering boundaries spurs the imagination to become more active in figuring out novel solutions within the constraints of the situation or context." Basically, chapter 2 outlines for us the difference between 'traditional' learning and the new culture of learning that is advocated for in this book. In the traditional culture, which I began to talk about a little bit during my chapter 1 overview, students are given knowledge based on what is considered to be important for succeeding in their environment. In the new culture of learning, students encounter the boundaries of their learning environment and then they become active in figuring out solutions within the boundaries of the learning environment. The main difference here is that the new culture emphasizes students developing adaptive strategies. I've heard a lot of buzzwords in the media, especially in education editorials like "rigor, grit, work-ethic" being used in reference to how we should be teaching students to think. I believe that teaching students to be flexible (aka adaptable) is a huge step towards achieving this. With that in mind, it would make sense that we should prioritize building up this "New culture of Learning". In fact, I have already witnessed some students in my class collaborating to figure out ways to best achieve their goals within my classroom. We were doing visual poetry, and one of the students in my room was not very artistic. Visual poetry (or concrete poetry) is basically a picture where you write poetry in the shape of your poem's subject. This student, rather than attempt to draw her shape beforehand and then fill in the letters, made a tracing of her shape using the backlight from her chromebook.Then she took the tracing of her shape and superimposed it behind the actual piece of paper she was writing her poem on. The cool part, however, wasn't the process. The cool part was this: she turned to another student beside her who was becoming frustrated with the project, and showed her exactly how she did it. By the end of the period, five students around her were using the same method. My question from this chapter: As an educator, how can I create assignments that encourage students to collaborate and create more efficient processes? Chapter 3: Embracing Change "the challenge is to find a way to marry structure and freedom to create something altogether new." In this chapter, our authors give the example of wikipedia as the embodiment of the new culture of learning. I think that this is apt, because wikipedia is ever-changing, but has constant guidelines and rules. This almost paradoxical relationship means that wikipedia's information is constantly tweaked and tuned this way and that, but that it is more accurate because of the constant change it undergoes. It is something altogether new because it has married structure and freedom. In terms of real-life, I think that teaching students how to create their own systems of learning (establishing the structure) and then facilitating them applying it to their real life (freedom) will give them more autonomy and a well-rounded approach to life. One lingering question from the chapter: What the heck does that look like within a real classroom? |
AuthorTrevor Rawlings is an educator at Pinacate Middle School in Perris, CA. Archives
April 2018
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