All advances in human communication tend to create larger effects. When, for example, our early ancestors developed the whites in their eyes, it greatly enhanced non-verbal communication. This resulted in new and more complex types of social collaboration and drove human development forward. We have never looked back, as it were.
These days, advances in communication come from technology, rather than biological progress. Technology, however, develops thousands of times faster than biology, so its effects can be both widespread and very dramatic.
We see this with the phenomenal rise of social networks. We’ve suddenly realized that we can now combine unlimited access to information with unlimited access to people. A billion of us are free to connect, create, share, or re-mix content, at little cost, across a two-way global network, according to our interests. It has become incredibly easy to from online groups – way, way easier than offline – groups that can easily function as tiny cells or as enormous groups. The participative web is here.
Communities of Practice
This ease of participation and group formation is defining how we will learn online. Look, for example, at how Wikipedia, Linux, and the open source movement all tend to function as communities of practice.
As a matter of fact, CoPs are everywhere. One reason is because the CoP offers the people plus content combination again. A second reason is that the CoP suits the medium. Learning in a CoP is not a matter of tranference from an active teacher to a passive consumer. (A traditional student/teacher relationship would work neither socially nor pedagogically on the web.) Instead, the relationships in a CoP are egalitarian and require social capital rather than authority. It simply has to be this way with loosely affiliated groups who collaborate, not on the basis of some institutional regulations, but on the basis of a shared learning objective.
I guess I know this from first-hand experience. ChinesePod is very much a CoP. Jenny, John, and I see ourselves more as resources and less as as the instigators or controllers of the learning. Learning there is not the result of teaching, but rather as the result of the individual’s engagement with the resources. Our role as practitioners is therefore to demonstrate the models and propagate good learning practices - it’s not the content alone that makes the learning happen but the society that froms around it. All of this is true to the CoP spirit. Here’s an example of how learners react (see the first paragraph).
Edublogger Steve Hargadon is rightly excited about these possibilities. In this excellent summary from last week, he identifies ten web 2.0 developments that will drive learning forward. He takes, as a starting point, the recent work of John Seely Brown (from whom I’ve also borrowed freely!) and he certainly does not underestimate the importance of collaboration. It’s a must read. My own conclusion from it all (just to be consistent) is that it is not the knowledge or the learning per se that will bring about change, so much as the collaboration that inevitably follows.
There will be collaboration and it will change everything.
Ken Carroll
Thank you Ken,
“Jenny, John, and I see ourselves more as resources and less as as the instigators or controllers of the learning. Learning there is not the result of teaching, but rather as the result of the individual’s engagement with the resources. ”
It is very great! Thank you very much and i learned a lot from you guys in the past six months. I never know that online learning can be so interesting and so effective untill i got to know Chinesepod. I found that our cpoddies are very good and always like to share and help others. That is collaboration. And i second Ken’s point, there will be collaboration. Thanks again.