Saturday, August 14, 2010

Passion-based learning, Joint collective agencies and Communities of Practice

Get ready for upcoming posts that will focus on learning in communities, work groups and collaborations.
Here's one to kick off the series.
http://www.nmc.org/2010-summer-conference/jsb-keynote-video
A must watch about John Seely Brown's ideas on learning in collaboration and the wisdom of study groups.

If you think of the way technology is changing our lives daily what with the internet and other social media- how can we hope to continue to educate kids using a 19th century, factory style, 'one-size fits-all' model? Get real!

Community whether online or in neighbourhoods is the new learning spaces and places representative of a new culture of learning. This is the message from John Seely Brown who sees the humble 'work group' with kids getting together to pursue their passion in a collaborative effort-joint collective agency - as the revolutionary wave in education.

Such social groups-communities of practice- evolve naturally when the kids are allowed to pursue their interests and seek to gain mastery of an area.
Online access is helping kids do this and Seely Brown gives us an extreme example of performance when he shares his story about surfer kids in and how they got to be the best in the world.

This bring to mind my daughter's work with her-virtual community. An online group under the name of deviantArt, it's a place where she has found a 'study group' that she is in the same mindset with.

Following her passion for poetry and visual art, she has found a strong group of youth and young adults that are doing the same.Participating, picking up ideas, reciprocating, the amount of learning she is doing through social media is astounding.

This is where she goes to dialogue, critic, share with like minded writers, poets and writers. This virtual community supports the work she does; and she in turn supports their work. I never realized how powerful this tool for learning is until i saw the comments and feedback she gets from fellow writers-spurring her own to greater work.

Learning in community, engaging one another, practicing 'deep tinkering' 'marinating in the experience' are some of the ideas for a new culture of learning Seely -Brown presents in his videos and essays-ideas that to unschooling folks are not new, but are superbly reaffirming however.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My daughter is on Deviant Art as well. Brilliant place.

Yes, school is dead. Let's hope it lies down soon.

Danae
http://www.threedegreesoffreedom.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

@Danae-That is so cool. maybe our daughters are connecting and we don't even know about it!!Too funny.

Anonymous said...

Unschooling doesn't have to be a lonely path. These posts proof that learning is a community oriented process. Something that schools tend to forget.

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