Chapter One: "The new culture of learning gives us the freedom to make the general personal and then share our personal experience in a way that, in turn, adds to the general flow of knowledge" (Thomas and Brown, 2011, p. 31). Chapter One details three examples of what Thomas and Brown refer to as the "new culture of learning." What all of these three stories have in common is that it allows individuals to reach out to others--near or far--using technology in order to direct their own learning. The Internet provides a platform for conducting research, experimentation, and collaboration. Today, the most valuable resources for information are not the traditional authorities of information--they are formed by a collection of stories by individual authors (everyday Joes, if you will) compiled together in forums or by search engines. But how can you be sure that this user-supplied content is true or valid? While Thomas and Brown provide these three illustrations of success stories--people successfully navigating the almost limitless amounts of information and finding within it value for their personal lives/goals, they do not [yet] discuss how, in order to learn through forums and online communities, the researcher must possess some fairly high-level critical thinking skills that enable them to differentiate good information from bad. After all, the amount of misinformation out there--particularly on hotbed issues relating to health/wellness and politics/current events--very likely outweighs the reliable. I certainly found this to be true while researching questions regarding conception and pregnancy before my son was born, and I experience it to a slightly lesser degree today whenever I conduct research about best practices for aquarium maintenance. I would not dispute the helpfulness of these forums (well, the aquarium ones anyway), but one should not just assume that everything posted in a forum is necessarily accurate. Chapter Two: "One of the basic principles of this kind of cultivation is that you don't interfere with the process, because it is the process itself that is interesting. In fact, the entire point of the experiment is to allow the culture to reproduce in an uninhibited, completely organic way, within the constraints of medium and environment--and then see what happens" (p. 37). Thomas and Brown compare the changes that a systemic educational setting needs to undergo to maintain relevancy and efficiency in today's world to a culture used in a scientific experiment. The teacher is responsible for creating an environment that contains both resources and boundaries, and allow the students to discover the content and process organically (much the way that a biological agent grows within a culture.) What does this really look like in practice? (Particularly in a traditional public school setting and traditional subject like English or Math or Science.) I can think of two examples of this style of learning environment from my high school career. The first was a creative writing activity in Honors English. We spent about a month passing a notebook from student to student in order to compose a collaborative class story. We had some limitations: a minimum of one page contribution, we had to be familiar with the parts of the story that had been written before ours, and we could not end the scene with the "waking up from a dream" trope. So there was a great deal of room for "play" (as Thomas and Brown define it.) As much as I loved doing the class story, it was only one activity in an entire year of curriculum, and it only took up about 15 minutes of class time per day. The other example that comes to mind is the format of my Film class. Once we had learned the basics, the teacher let us pick out our desired equipment and told us to go off and create. We were free to roam the campus or even leave campus. We were free to use outside actors, come up with our own props, create our own stories, and edit and compile them however we wanted. I can't say that every single day in this class was used as productively as it ought to have been, but we worked collaboratively and we turned in finished projects of high quality and creativity, and the class was considered an enormous success. Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace.
2 Comments
2/9/2016 09:10:48 am
Hi Daydree,
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2/10/2016 07:30:55 am
I appreciate the comment you made questioning how we are supposed to know if content is accurate. This is something that I as a history teacher am thinking about a great deal, and something that should be taught in any history class. It is not always easy, and should be a concern for any teacher.
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