tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18676377.post-36903531329673005512008-05-11T18:52:00.000-07:002008-05-11T18:52:00.000-07:002008-05-11T18:52:00.000-07:00Really, I think this blog post and the resulting comments illustrate precisely why we should be a little more cautious and a bit less orgasmic over "Learning 2".<BR/><BR/>First, in the original post, there is really nothing that has not been said dozens (hundreds?) of times in other venues. The original post, in fact, isn't original at all.<BR/><BR/>Redundancy is becoming rampant in the educational community as everyone rushes to say the same thing and I suspect the same thing is happening in other domains as well.<BR/><BR/>Now, hear some descriptives culled from the readers who evaluated this post: "great", "awesome" (several times - we seem to be losing our facility for language, or we are easily awed), "wonderful" and "absolutely wonderful", "informative", etc. A few readers took issue with the post or portions of it, but I think we can say "So much for peer review".<BR/><BR/>No doubt, the new "socializing", "content creation" and "sharing" technologies of the Web potentiate the creation of new or enhanced learning pathways, the most useful of which can probably be lumped under "accessibility". But let us not allow ourselves to be transformed (by means of these very social instruments?)into a cult of magical thinkers. Whether there is, really, anything new under the sun in education is far from proven.<BR/><BR/>The predictions that now abound in the Learning 2 domain are becoming downright silly, with "The End of Teaching!", "A World Without Courses!", "Self-Directed Learning!" and similar euphemisms for what really amounts to educational anarchy sprouting up in alarming numbers. It is impossible not to suspect that many of these articles are written by educators who are themselves ambivalent about education.<BR/><BR/>Somewhere today (I am researching the topic) I read that "learning really takes place in the conversations that occur in the hallway outside the lecture hall" (and not in the lecture hall itself). Really?<BR/><BR/>Lecture: "American conservatism can be distinguished from European conservatism in the following ways (which are then enumerated and illustrated)"...<BR/><BR/>Hallway: "Hey, baby, ya wanna grab a beer?"<BR/><BR/>The magical thinking is largely based on a mythical learner who probably does not, for the most part, actually exist until the average individual is past his undergraduate years. And, the magical thinking is also based on a cultic worship of the value (in the economic sense) of collaboration. It's funny, isn't it, how we've gone from thinking about "mob mentality" to "the wisdom of crowds"?<BR/><BR/>The more you know about the human mind, the more you know about exactly how learning happens (start with Ebbinghaus and work your way forward), the more you know about the development of the brain during childhood, adolescence and young adulthood; the more you know about what collaboration can do and does NOT do very well, and the more you understand the current youth culture, the less you will talk about throwing traditional learning models out the window.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com