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Apprenticeship 2.0 Could Fuel 21st Century Learning
In a recent New Yorker piece on cookbooks, Adam Gopnik observes that "the space between learning the facts about how something is done and learning how to do it always turns out to be large, at times immense." Although Gopnik is explicitly referring to cooking, this statement could be equally applied to most forms of learning since the nineteenth century.… more
I think communities of practice will evolve as the result of the social media space, meaning we will not hear of them as much. I do like the idea of apprenticeship and mentoring. We need more knowledge transfer, and soft skills going from Baby Boomers to Gen X and Y.
eBooks and Learning
Now that the ebook industry has set its sights on the textbook and educational markets, it's especially important for educators to shape discussion of the benefits and potential impact of ereaders. Rather than bemoan the loss of wood pulp and glue that make up current texts, we are better served by asking how these physical objects serve learning, and what is lost (or gained) by replacing them with electronic texts. One doesn't have to abandon a love for print books to appreciate the unique affordances of new technologies. For example: how many would prefer poring through multiple volumes of a print encyclopedia to the clean, stream-of-consciousness experience offered by hyperlinks in a digital encyclopedia?… more
Classroom Authority and Twitter
An interesting aspect of Twitter's recent surge in popularity has been how educators have embraced the technology, not just for networking and personal communication, but also in the classroom. Many teachers have found Twitter to be a helpful tool for accessing the backchannel—the discussion students are having about what is going on in the classroom—in real time. In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, Jeffrey R. Young interviewed two teachers who use Twitter in large lecture courses, projecting students' Twitter posts in the classroom live. Experiments like these frighten many instructors.… more
Actually, my colleague Negar Mottahedeh (http://twitter.com/negaratduke) and several others here, including myself and many others in the HASTAC network (www.hastac.org) are using not only Twitter but all forms of social media to restructure communication. Negar held the first-ever (so far as we know) Twitter Film Festival, where her students watched and tweeted for a week. It was fabulous to participate via tweets. Another colleague, Laurent Dubois, did something similar for his course on colonialism and world soccer. And I do in "This Is Your Brain on the Internet." HASTAC Scholars (grads and some undergrads, 130 of them around the country) also live blog and micro-blog the conferences they participate in, extending the network. It's only around the edges, but don't give up. It's happening. Come join us, if you are interested. You join simply by signing up to the website. John Jones, by the way, is one of the exemplary HASTAC Scholars, a real leader now and in the future, too. HASTAC is a network of networks and part of a higher education extension of the Digital Media and Learning network. Thanks so much for your interest and comment!