While reading the 2nd part of the book, "A New Culture of Learning," I was intrigued with what the authors were saying about the ideas of collectives and them being a good environment for learning. While I agree in the value of this form of community and the fact that many people learn A LOT while participating online with them through peer to peer learning, and due to the fact information and media are continuously advancing, but the authors even state, "no one is assigned to a traditional role of teacher or student" (Thomas and Brown, p. 51). While reading this all I could think was how could I incorporate this into my classroom? While it sounds great and would be something I would be interested in trying to make work, I still have to operate within the confines of a traditional classroom setting. Perhaps I could incorporate more mentors, but initially I would be the mentor for most content related activities and therefore feel like I would just be doing the same thing as in my traditional role as teacher. At least it has given me something to think about how to change up the culture of learning in my future classroom.
This third of the book (specifically Ch 5) also dealt with something that has bugged me about social media for a while now: "Life logging." Are we too transparent? I think a lot of people are. They spend TOO much time on social media outlets like Facebook and think too much into what others are doing, friending, or more upsetting, not friending. Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't care if it's jammy time (pajamas) at night nor want to hear a play by play of your day. The key to making this work is being able to use a collective appropriately and balancing the right kind of personal with professional. Another thing that was difficult to apply a collective to a classroom is the lack of a "targeted goal or objective" (p. 58) which is something I have to teach to. Though while I was having these thoughts of why I couldn't incorporate this type of learning into my classroom (or didn't know how), I read, "almost every different issue we face today is a collective rather than a personal problem" (p. 59). That pretty much answered my question. Use a collective. I'm sure someone out there is blogging about how to do this.
Lastly, for this 2nd part of the book, Chapter 6 deals with types of knowledge: Tacit (what is experienced) and Explicit (what we are told). This made a lot of sense. Again, I thought of my 2 year old daughter when reading the example in the book. I can tell her not to do something because it will hurt, but until she falls off one thing and actually knows it hurts, she doesn't register that falling off anything may hurt too. This happened today, but I was there to save the day. It is difficult to let her fall in order to let her learn. I think we may protect our students in this manner too sometimes. I have also noticed our students are terrified to fail too, likely because it hurts. Another big component of this chapter was the inquiry. What was great was that even as I was reading and coming up with questions about how or why it couldn't work (collectives), I was also answering my questions in a way that will lead me to more inquiry. Like many of my students I want to be told the answer, but I guess I should go find some for myself.
This third of the book (specifically Ch 5) also dealt with something that has bugged me about social media for a while now: "Life logging." Are we too transparent? I think a lot of people are. They spend TOO much time on social media outlets like Facebook and think too much into what others are doing, friending, or more upsetting, not friending. Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't care if it's jammy time (pajamas) at night nor want to hear a play by play of your day. The key to making this work is being able to use a collective appropriately and balancing the right kind of personal with professional. Another thing that was difficult to apply a collective to a classroom is the lack of a "targeted goal or objective" (p. 58) which is something I have to teach to. Though while I was having these thoughts of why I couldn't incorporate this type of learning into my classroom (or didn't know how), I read, "almost every different issue we face today is a collective rather than a personal problem" (p. 59). That pretty much answered my question. Use a collective. I'm sure someone out there is blogging about how to do this.
Lastly, for this 2nd part of the book, Chapter 6 deals with types of knowledge: Tacit (what is experienced) and Explicit (what we are told). This made a lot of sense. Again, I thought of my 2 year old daughter when reading the example in the book. I can tell her not to do something because it will hurt, but until she falls off one thing and actually knows it hurts, she doesn't register that falling off anything may hurt too. This happened today, but I was there to save the day. It is difficult to let her fall in order to let her learn. I think we may protect our students in this manner too sometimes. I have also noticed our students are terrified to fail too, likely because it hurts. Another big component of this chapter was the inquiry. What was great was that even as I was reading and coming up with questions about how or why it couldn't work (collectives), I was also answering my questions in a way that will lead me to more inquiry. Like many of my students I want to be told the answer, but I guess I should go find some for myself.