Prue Salter’s Blog: Exploring the Power of Technology as a Learning Tool

“One can design systems of accountability and policies…..but one cannot design the practices that will emerge…One can design roles, but one cannot design identities that will be constructed through these roles. One can design visions, but one cannot design the allegiance necessary to align energy behind those visions….One can design work processes, but not work practices; one can design a curriculum but not learning.” Pp. 229, Communities of practice, Wenger, 1999.

As we begin the process of designing a learning community in our group, re-reading this passage in Wenger was initially a bit discouraging. It seems there is only so much we can do to design an effective learning community, we have to accept that the community will start to take on a life of its own and determine its own direction. On reflection, I actually found this concept empowering. What we are doing is creating a vehicle for learning, but then handing over the navigation and driving to those who started off as the passengers. It our role as designers to then be responsive and reactive to the needs of the community and to provide the necessary frameworks as needs and wants emerge.

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“…because all learning eventually gains its significance in the type of person we become.” Pp. 226, Communities of practice, Wenger, 1999.

One thing about learning is that you will never know when things you learn become useful later in life. When I was living in Singapore in the mid nineties, my employed paid a web design company (there wasn’t a lot of choice then) to design their site. It was expensive and inadequate. I bought a book ‘html for dummies’ and said I’ll make the site for $1000. And I did! And then I taught Primary school students how to code in html and they made web pages showing all the Australian lollies they were missing in Singapore with scanned images of the wrapper papers.

At the time (oh how naïve) I thought I am never going to use this skill again. In the end it has turned out to be one of the most important skills I have developed.  Wenger is right, eventually, all learning gains significance through the skills we develop and how that transforms as us a person and our ability to participate and negotiate meaning.

This unassuming skill has certainly transformed my life and my identity in many ways I did not expect 13 years ago!

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“The perspectives we bring to our endeavours are important because they shape both what we perceive and what we do.” Pp. 225, Communities of practice, Wenger, 1999.

So this means the first stage of designing an effective learning experience is to determine the perspectives from which potential learners will be approaching their learning. This is a challenging thing to do! Can we survey students? But then can we trust their disclosures? Perhaps they will be influenced by other factors and say what they think we want to hear. Perhaps they are not fully aware of their own perspectives, especially at a subconscious level.

In the learning community I examined (php coders), the community may be a diverse group of people but their perspectives that relate to php coding and online learning are all fairly similar. I would suspect most of the group is self-taught to some extent, most of the group is used to finding online support for tech issues and all of the group know the frustration of trying to resolve a programming issue. This results in a fairly cohesive community who achieve fairly specific outcomes as they are all entering the community with similar perspectives and common goals.

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‘Communities of Practice’ – Wenger (1999) This extract from the final chapters of Communities of Practice, by Etienne Wenger – provides us with a dual framework: 1) as a participant – which aspects of design to you notice are present (or not) in your community and 2) as a designer – as we prepare to move into the second part of the subject, it provides us with a framework for our own designs. Focus on part 1 – your community experiences. How does Wenger’s work inform your analysis of your community?.

There was just soooo much in this reading (as you can see in the three summaries below in which I was actually pretty ruthless and left out heaps of stuff I would have normally included only because otherwise the summary was going to end up as long as the reading). I can see again I am going to have trouble being ‘brief’ in my response to this article.

So instead of just recording all my responses as to how Wenger’s work informs my analysis of my community, I am going to just wait a few days and see which of all the thoughts swirling around floats to the top – what really speaks most to me based not on first thoughts and reactions but instead on considered reflection.

So in the words of Arnie, ‘I’ll be back’.

UPDATE A FEW DAYS LATER

I have decided that there is so much I want to discuss in the Wenger article I am just going to post a series of blogs over a period of time to respond to the questions above.

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Chapter 4: Social Learning – Cornford (1999) What are the significant aspects of social learning theories that relate to learning communities / networks? Again – aspects of the works in this chapter can be useful frameworks for analysing your community. You may like to select a framework or focus for analysis – even before you select your community! This will also provide you with some focus when researching further for articles in journals.

I found Cornford’s discussion on social learning theories particularly interesting in relation to two specific communities I am currently exploring.

Impact of Social Comparison Theory on the search for an online community.

In my search for an online community to be examined as the subject of our first assignment, I directly experienced many of the phenomenon discussed by Cornford around social comparison theory.

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Chapter 3: Social Psychology of Adult Learning – Saunders (1999) Reviewing the chapter with our focus of learning communities as a framework – how will the various different theories and perspectives apply to our context? Already we have some experience with self-disclosure (look at our Profiles on Ning!) Review some of our discussion forums for learning conversations…. just for starters.

There was so much in this article that was relevant to our focus of learning communities as a framework that I am going to focus just on the top 5 areas that I found most interesting.

1. ADULTS AND GROUPS

There was much discussion and research presented in this chapter about the concept that adults will learn more effectively through interaction with others and participation in groups. Yet my observation has been that many adults prefer a lecture-style presentation than having to participate in a group activity.

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Horizon Report 2007. Review your familiarity and current practices against the key emerging technologies highlighted in this report.

1. User-created content (blogs, photostreams, wikibooks, machinima clips)

Prior to this subject, I had little experience with user-created content apart from Wikipedia and YouTube and have had no experience in integrating them as part of an educational process.

2. Social networking (the reason students log on – may represent a way to increase student participation)

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Horizon Report 2008. Review your familiarity and current practices against the key emerging technologies highlighted in this report.

1. Grassroots video

This is one I have been spending a lot of time on lately. On one of my sites I have lots of video clips and I have been constantly exploring different formats and ways of encoding the file to see what gives me the best results. At the moment I am evaluating a number of streaming video services. My biggest issue with video is that there seems to be no standards yet and so there are infinite ways you can put video on the web but no best practice. In fact, I’d love to be able to film some of you tomorrow at the block doing a 20second clip on topics like how you study and learn or how you manage time etc.

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Seely Brown certainly had remarkable insight into the direction that learning in the digital age would travel. So what has changed since then? Seely Brown & Duguid (1999) and Seely Brown & Adler (2008)

• Infrastructure (eg. broadband and speeds) and availability and access have improved for the majority of Australians. Computers are faster and cheaper. Internet is not just restricted to computers either, we can use mobiles and other devices as well.

• The web has gone from being perceived as a means to either send a ‘letter’ quickly or a faster way to browse an ‘encyclopedia’ to being an integral part of our lives – we do banking and pay bills, shop online, communicate (even date!), contribute and blog, develop ideas, create and explore our own identities online and relationships with others. For many when their ‘internet’ crashes, their lives grind to a halt! Seely Brown’s prediction of the shift of using technology to support relationships (as opposed to individual experiences) has certainly been validated.

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