I made a number of new twitter friends and had a pretty significant conversation with two prominent educators in Canada, Jason Nolan and Melanie McBride. We chatted about social constructivism, power dynamics, technocracy and inquiry based education. Not to mention a number of other concepts that went over my head.
I was left with ten new theories to engage with and honestly a little overwhelmed. Then I showed up late to the golf course and played a pretty bad round. Or at least I thought so during the round.
Driving to the course, I was reflecting on this idea that in order for social constructivist education methods to work, we need to create places to play and for different social groups to intermingle. Twitter, facebook, ning and tinychat can do this...but it has to be organic...that is, it can't be a creepy treehouse.
At the end of my golf round a friend asked me about RSS feeds and it clicked, I wasn't golfing to golf. I was golfing to socialize, and if I happened to play well, then that is just great too. He learned more about RSS and Yahoo pipes. I learned more about how to keep applying my constructivist philosophy to everything I do.
However, the question still lingers in my mind...will this be on the test?
PS
I shot 113
2 comments:
Very nice post! Of course, the last line says it all. Namely, that so many people learn to view learning as something that only has value if it's "on the test" - not to learn for learning sake. Who taught us that? Bad models of education. What Paolo Freire termed the "banking model" of education, where knowledge is transmitted to the learner rather than learning as a constructed act. What occurred on the golf course was just that - a natural situation of learning. No doubt your friend learned something about RSS and you also learned more about golf. As well, how a fun social situation that you enjoy (golfing) can be a learning space. The real "classroom" exists in the spaces we love and feel stimulated in. Why do so many CEOs do business on the links? That's why. But right now, that kind of chioce - to learn in environments that we prefer - is still a luxury. A privilege. It doesn't have to be that way - not for school or for work :)
I think your comment breaks into the real heart of the issues. The luxury to learn in our own environments is reserved for only the affluent. This has social justice implications. In the future who will have the right to determine their own learning space?
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