Quote: “In communities, people learn in order to belong. In a collective, people belong in order to learn. Communities derive their strength from creating a sense of belonging, while collectives derive theirs from participation.” (p. 52). This is an intriguing distinction demonstrating the basis of the collectives the book is based upon.
Question: The authors state that in the new culture of peer-to-peer learning, people learn from each other, and through mentors who “provide a sense of structure to guide learning.” (p. 51). Is this really enough, however? Don’t learners, at least at some point, need something more than simply mentoring and guiding? How do they get the foundational knowledge they need to make sense of the information they’re getting (how to read or how to reason, for example)? Can this be a substitute for traditional notions of school, or only a supplement?
Epiphany: “Blogs are a medium for learning, but they do not teach. Rather, they generate the space for a collective to emerge.” (p. 54) This would explain why so many blogs go nowhere – how do we replicate the successful blogs so that more learning spaces emerge?
Connection: And, then, in answer to my question above, “Any effort to define or direct collectives would destroy the very thing that is unique and innovative about them.” (p. 54). So, is it even possible to create educational programs based upon these ideas? Or, is each one going to be a one-time phenomenon that cannot be duplicated? If so, is there even any reason to attempt to study these new cultures of learning and incorporate their characteristics into an educational scenario?
Chapter 5
Quote: “Increasingly, the Internet is becoming a place where the personal can begin to meet the collective in a meaningful way.” (p. 63). I’m not sure I see this. For some few people, perhaps; but for most, I think it’s still a place to look things up, find what they need, and move one without adding to the conversation at all.
Question: “But consider any online site that caters to an individual’s personal interests . . . There is no public influencing of private minds. Yet learning happens all the time.” (p. 58). Is this really true? Isn’t the point of many of these sites specifically to influence the minds of others? And, at the very least, some of the sites seem to succeed in pulling in people who think alike and encouraging them in the beliefs they already have. Additionally, how much learning truly happens on these sites? In my experience, it seems that the active participants are simply re-stating the beliefs they already have; and the anonymous visitors are checking in, reading up on the issue, and changing nothing. This seems like an extremely over-optimistic view of what actually happens in most virtual sites.
Epiphany: The authors posit that the fact that the boundary between public and private is becoming so permeable indicates that we need to find a new way to think about public vs. private. (p. 56). Their examples attempt to point out a difference between revealing private information in a collective and revealing it some type of overwhelmingly public space (Central Park), and find the difference in the fact that the collective is formed specifically to provide an opportunity for the action and in connections with others doing similar actions. (p. 57). I agree that we may need to find a new way to think about this topic, but the distinctions made in the authors’ examples don’t help me in that regard. I’m wondering if there is some other distinction that could be made more effectively.
Connection: The book holds up university study groups as an ideal learning environment (p. 67-68). However, this has certainly never been my experience. The study groups I have been involved in largely constituted a waste of time. Little studying happened. The focus was much more on socializing. And, when studying did occur, it usually consisted of the person who understood the topic explaining it to the others so they could copy it into their notes while still not understanding it. Perhaps this is why I’m a little skeptical of this new culture of learning.
Chapter 6
Quote: “. . . most teachers know that when students feel passion for a topic, they will seek out the tough problems, rather than the easy ones, and work harder to solve them. And best of all, they will have fun doing it.” (p. 80). This establishes an extremely high-level goal, which sounds good, but what about those of us and our students who do not have this kind of passion, or at least haven’t found one yet?
Question: “In the old culture of learning, educational institutions and practices focused almost exclusively on explicit knowledge, leaving the tacit dimension to build gradually on its own, over time.” (p. 75). I think this is true because the tacit dimension requires experiential knowledge, as the authors make clear in the rest of the chapter. However, if this is the case, is it even possible to speed this process up and base an educational system on it? Doesn’t tacit knowledge have to build slowly and gradually? Can we do anything as educators to nurture this, or must it develop organically?
Epiphany: “The problem is that almost every technique and practice we have for understanding how we learn has been about the explicit – the content – in a stable world.” (p. 76). This seems to me to articulate exactly the difficulties with this new culture of learning. We simply have no basis for understanding how to nurture it.
Connection: The analogy to a college education is very apt here. (p. 78). It is almost impossible to pinpoint what it is about a college education that affects people positively, but it clearly does have this effect. And, there is a good argument that it is simply being immersed in an environment that values learning, rather than any explicit curricula. If this is the case, however, don’t traditional schools fill this requirement as well? Again, this is an environment that values and focuses on learning; so does the content matter at all?