Some scattered thoughts in response to Britt Watwood’s very thoughtful post summarizing and reflecting on the recent Electronic Campus of Virginia retreat:
Glad my tweets gave you a shiver! I miss all my Virginia friends and colleagues and I was certainly there with you in spirit.
Several near-overwhelming things emerged for me at the Engelbart fest (http://www.programforthefuture.org). I hope I can blog about them over the next few days. For now, I’ll just say that I’m more convinced than ever that education can fruitfully be considered as an Engelbartian “augmentation” / bootstrap experience in which innovation broadly considered–let’s call it the effective, inspiring continuation of the human conversation by means of significant new contributions to that conversation–is at the heart of what we think of as learning. After all, deep learning always presents itself to the *learner* as an innovation: “hey, I didn’t know that before!” Maybe another word for innovation is “discovery,” which Jerome Bruner writes about very eloquently in his essay on “The Act of Discovery” in the collection _On Knowing_.
In short, there’s a drama to learning, and that drama is connected with both a comprehensive understanding of the conversation and a deep intuition of one’s own power to contribute to that conversation. The many emerging technologies in what we call Web 2.0, and in the sorts of things the Horizon Report identifies, at their best enable both the understanding and the intuition.
Hi Gardner,
Yes, discovery is key. There needs to be some kind of an intrinsic drive, a curiosity, to push someone to learn. There needs to be an addiction to discover, and a mindset to learn form events where some other people might not (like failure for instance).
Emotion is often missing from the curriculum, but it’s what drives humans to be motivated!
Thanks for the post! Can’t wait to meet you at the Winter Faculty Institute in January!
Interesting because the pair– discovery and drama– encapsulate both the technological and emotional-cultural response. The drama part is important to me, both as an educator and a learner. And it ties directly into the risk/trust/love circle that I continue to believe at the heart of the matter. I look forward to more, once you have recovered!
Great photo, Gardner.
Thinking about the learning-innovation link… is incremental learning maintenance of a prior innovation?
@Matt Ah, an addiction to discovery. Lovely way to describe the process. Many writers believe this addiction to be hardwired into our brains from birth, and gradually blunted or eliminated through the process of formal schooling. I don’t take such a dire (or Rousseauistic) view, except in my darker moments–but undoubtedly the forced march through “learning” does not nurture the search for discovery as it should. Sometimes–at all.
@Chris A nice insight, in both senses of the term “nice.” I hadn’t mapped them so, but I think you’ve got a powerful idea there. Technologies do foster discovery as well as result from them. But drama is the shared narrative that makes the discovery matter. But here’s the harder thought: can we have drama, or any kind of satisfying narrative, without a sense of shared *telos*? That I wonder and worry about.
@Bryan A lovely idea, sir! Let’s say we framed incremental learning as maintenance of a prior innovation, or even as the innovation project resulting from a leap of insight. There may be something here that would bring drama to education. Certainly it would be a relief from the idea that we’re simply drilling prior knowledge. We’re doing that, of course, but it’s the “simply” part that turns murderous. If the drill keeps us sharp for the insight, and the insight-innovation-project entails practice and practice, then the entire experience retains the “iron-fresh odor of discovery” that Frost says a great poem retains.
To take the Drama idea a little more literally – I’ve spent time over the past few years playing with possibilities for using strategies from Drama Education in online contexts – especially in Second Life. I’ve tried to bring together some elements of role-playing games, drama conventions and virtual worlds to see how we can motivate informal learning.
I’ve been pleased with what I’ve found – it tends to echo the findings of many others – that by playful, but purposeful, roleplay we can engage in processes of learning that are stimulating and generative… the learning drives us to investigate and interrogate more deeply than casual classroom conversation.
The shift of emphasis is from teaching to learning and repositions teachers as part of the learning community.
@Kim Thanks very much for building out my thoughts with your own experience. I think you’re exactly right that drama conventions (and strategies) can invigorate learning communities and make every learner’s role more flexible and adaptable–including the role of expert learner that the teacher occupies. Playful but purposeful–playful *and* purposeful, even if the purpose is “only” exploring possibilities (very arduous work, that!)–yep, that’s the ticket. George Polya writes about the need for the teacher to dramatize for students his or her own process of discovery–acting out the thinking, as well as thinking the acting-out, if that makes sense.
BTW, thanks for the link in your blog to the Zander Pop!Cast. Fascinating exploration of teaching and learning there. Overlaps usefully with Zander’s TED talk. Riches! and shining eyes all around. Here’s to one-buttock playing!