So, when you take a look at these articles and from when they were published, it appears as though one is almost 20 years old while the other is slightly over 10 years old.  What is sad, is that in both articles the authors had a true vision of how we could re-envision education with the internet as a tool to assist us, and truthfully that vision isn’t being enacted in a traditional academic setting.  Strong concepts don’t change, and if you read through what they are suggesting in the article, they are all highly doable suggestions, but of course, that would require a significant shift in how education is approached in traditional settings, which is exactly what I am here to change.

I really enjoyed reading both articles although the concepts presented clearly aren’t new ones.  I will say that taking my previous course on constructionism absolutely allowed me to read these articles with far more context, so thanks Dr. Vea.  The more I read about learning being something that is socially constructed and the clear cut simple examples, the more I buy in.  I know we are supposed to be reviewing the articles, but I feel like as this is a blog post, I might as well incorporate some of my own personal thoughts/previously held beliefs.  When I first entered education, I would say I 100% thought it was my job to deliver the information and for the students to acquire it.  I thought I was cutting edge because I would assign technology projects that no one else was at the time.  Now, I read articles like this, and go through my previous constructionism class and realize there was nothing special about what I was doing.  If I were to defend myself, I went alternate route, so didn’t have the learning theory classes that others might.  I will say, that my teaching over the years has somehow evolved more so to reflect a Web 2.0 (leaning) approach naturally simply as I evolved as a teacher.

There were so many key elements that jumped out to me that were presented in the articles, so I will focus on just a few.  One thing I will say is that there is an overwhelming/underlying theme of constructionism and the main concept of learning communities on a whole.  I always start with the text that seems like it is going to be more of a grind, so I jumped in with “Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age”, by John Seely Brown.  I thought it was exceptional.  He points out so many things that make our students different in the “digital age” and how that affects the way they learn.  I don’t recall how many different dimensions were highlighted in regards to how students of today learn, but do know that he focused on several: literacy (the new form of literacy, aka navigation), how students reason (aka assess info on the internet), discovery aka, action, bricolage (aka constructing from someone else’s previous knowledge),  and judgement, which is essentially reasoning.  When you look at how students do these activities or should be, compared to say when we were students it is truly different.  Kids these days do have an additional literacy, it is called digital literacy.  They are constantly bombarded with information that they need to be able to determine in a split second if it is legitimate or not ( I can tell you without training, aka, teaching, they don’t know how to do this).  The other amazing aspects of students these days and I have seen it first hand is their willingness to take something previously created and build on it, or tweak it (scratch is a prime example, they borrow code and then enhance it).  In order to do that, of course, the judgment piece must be there.  It is interesting that I do truly witness how these new aspects of digital learners impact students as they navigate through schooling.

The other topic that both articles covered significantly was that of learning being a social construct, and how the introduction of the internet has made that ever more true.  As I stated above, I was definitely on board with this form of instruction when I first started teaching.  As you work backward from effective work environments, you realize that yes, there has to be base knowledge (tacit), but that the knowledge that is often truly applicable to the actual position is conjointly learned.  What I love about this is a learning community can be so diverse or specific.  For example, to teach, you generally need to be a student teacher, essentially an apprenticeship, which is something that has existed for possibly as long as defined work roles have.  On the other hand, I belong to several technology teacher groups on facebook.  These groups have probably done more to help educate me in my particular field than anything else.  Knowing that options like that exist for my students is simply amazing.  Also, I will say that I do try to treat many of my older classes (4th and 5th) as learning communities in which we all learn from each other.  There are absolutely times where I can learn from my students and I try to highlight those moments, as well as when my students learn from each other.  In general, this has become one of my favorite approaches to teaching and I hope that I can incorporate it more in my lower grades.

I am sure that this blog post has a bit of a ramble to it, but like Dr. Sharma said ( I think) I am trying to find my voice.  I hope I was at least clear that I did garner quite a bit of information from the texts and that I am excited about what I did learn.  Looking forward to learning more ways to help my students engage with Web 2.0 learning.