Beyond Barriers

by William Farren

categories: Education and Technology, Teaching Ideas and Resources, Unschooling Alternatives

Published August 11, 2009 @ 07:04AM PT

In my previous post, I introduced an idea for a different type of online class, one which is only possible because of available technology. Many people have, rightfully so, questioned technology's ability to seriously impact education. It is often over-hyped, oversold and overpriced, yet I still hold the belief that under the right circumstances, it can help learners (and their communities) reach new places. For me, the challenge will be to do more than simply move the traditional classroom model online, throwing in some Web 2.0 tools for good measure. It will rest on how to best combine current technologies with pedagogical approaches that lead to significance, flow, self-direction, group action, sharing, joy... and produce the type of learning that will help us tackle the distributed, complex problems of our day.

Technology has never quite lived up to its potential as a teaching/learning tool because critics have spent too much time analyzing the wrong thing. We've thrown billions of dollars of hardware and software into the classroom, analyzing it under a microscope without doing much looking at the pedagogy it's supposed to support. In a recent blog comment (post worth reading!), Ira Socol astutely points out, "It is the job of education to alter itself to prove itself of value to the world which now exists."

What would happen if education altered itself to take advantage of the mature, ubiquitous tools that let anyone become a mass publisher? Or that allow for the simple group forming that makes people and their ideas findable, that simplify sharing and collaboration, and that disrupt long-held power structures? What would happen if educational programs stopped viewing socializing and play as hostile to learning, but instead, in the words of a recent report (p. 35), "positioned [themselves] to step in and support moments when youth are motivated to move from friendship-driven to more interest-driven forms of new media use"?

A traditional class, with its small group of students, insulated from the outside world, fails to capitalize on what's happening beyond its borders. Bill Joy, Sun Microsystem's founder, points out that most good ideas and talent are not in your institution but outside of it. It would seem to make sense then to try to establish connections with those on the outside.

Today's technology has made it easy to create and join networks. This has drastically changed important quantitative variables involved in learning. When a networked class member connects to another networked class member, they do not simply add another person to their network--they add another person's network to their network. Interconnections grow geometrically. The possibility of finding just the right person for a collaboration, or to answer a question, increases dramatically. More people connected to more information and the minds that are producing it, improves the possibilities of getting better feedback, attaining quicker results, and connecting people to new ideas. All this connective growth has increased variety, catering to the long tail. Using social media, students can now join formal and informal affinity groups and take online classes that in the past, either didn't exist, or were prohibitively expensive for their schools to offer. The quantity of information available today due to the fact that anyone can become a mass publisher is greater than at any time in our history. Those using networks and social tools like Delicious.com, Facebook and TweetDeck, are figuring out how to take advantage of ever-increasing amounts of information, finding needles in the ever-deepening haystacks.

While networked learning has allowed us to access larger quantities of information and increased variety for learners, maybe even more importantly, it has the potential to improve the quality of ideas. In his must-read book, Here Comes Everybody - The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Clay Shirky points out that, "... most good ideas came from people who were bridging 'structural holes', which is to say people whose immediate social network included employees outside their department. Shirky follows with a quote from researcher Ronald Burt, author of "The Social Origins of Good Ideas", who writes:

People connected to groups beyond their own can expect to find themselves delivering valuable ideas, seeming to be gifted with creativity. This is not creativity born of deep intellectual ability. It is creativity as an import-export business. An idea mundane in one group can be a valuable insight in another.

If we look at how schools are structured today with their often strict adherence to hierarchies and disciplines, it would seem there are plenty of opportunities for bridging structural holes.

As potential agents of change, schools spend too much time in the future, preparing their students for that fateful moment when they enter the "real world".  Insulated classes, island teachers and outdated policies end up disengaging students from the very real (and current!) world just outside their classroom window. Millions of hearts and minds ready to engage with all types of issues sit idly, battling the clock. Here, technology has the potential to be a real game-changer. Not only does it put students in touch with important issues, it allows them to do something about them. Social media has changed power structures in unprecedented ways. With the ability to easily connect with others (often surreptitiously), take pictures, record video, mass publish, and share information with little or no interference from superiors, people today are taking on governments, corporations, mass media--and winning. Maybe it's time for students to be challenged to do more with their networked technology than simply check grades and hand in work.

Many of today's most pressing challenges like climate change, fisheries depletion, virulent disease, invasive species... are complex, distributed, messy, extend beyond borders, and will require cooperation and collaboration in order to solve. The traditional school model where a few people at the top provide scarce knowledge to passive individuals at the bottom in order to make them more competitive on the global stage, no longer seems to make as much sense. (If it ever did.) We're only going to get better at this when we realize that information is no longer scarce, that people actually do like sharing and helping, and that force and competition will not solve all problems. The tools to effect serious change are on our desks, in our pockets and in our schools. However, they'll never live up to their potential as tools for change while the pedagogy they're supposed to support goes unanalyzed.