Reading this week’s text from Thomas and Seely Brown I found myself enjoying and agreeing with what they said.  I also thought about what the new culture of learning would look like in a second grade classroom and it reminded me of a book I had read when I had my first child. When I was a new mom my sister loaned me her copy of The Danish Way of Parenting by Jessica Alexander and Iben Sandhal and in the book the authors discuss how important unstructured play is to a child’s development. It is through play, they say, that children learn to cope with stress and learn resilience.  This happens because children are playing for fun, not to earn a medal or to learn a set of skills.  It is their own desire that motivates them.  In the section titled A Tale of Two Cultures, Thomas and Seely Brown called the new learning an organic process and that phrase really resonated with me, both as a mom and teacher of young children.

I have been around long enough, like many of you, to know that every few years in education there comes about new buzz words and best practices for teaching.  Some are implemented and others fall flat never to be heard of again.  Teachers change as well and learn along with their students. Five years ago our school district changed math programs from “Everyday Mathematics” to the “Singapore Math” program.  Attending a two day training on Singapore Math was enough to get my feet wet, but I didn’t actually learn the program. It reminds me of Siemens view of connectivism in which the true learning, for me, happened outside of a traditional education environment.  The training was a great introduction to the program but my learning took place when I actually implemented the program in my classroom. I also learned while communicating and sharing with my colleagues what worked and what didn’t. It is a completely different way of thinking about math.  Now that I am very comfortable teaching the program and helping students learn concepts through the concrete-pictorial-abstract model, I see it’s benefits.  Still though, the main complaint I hear from parents when work is sent home has remained the same, “I never learned math like this” and “I don’t know how to help my kid.”  It can be uncomfortable and frustrating for parents, the same can be said for teachers who are now faced with 21st century learners and technology in classrooms.

Thomas and Seely Brown describe the new culture of learning as, a learning based approach in which the traditional classroom model is replaced with environments of digital media.  One where the focus is on “learning through engagement within the world.” This new ecology of learning requires a shift in how we think about when and where learning takes place.    Learning for our students is a continual process, one in which content and standards are embedded within work-related tasks.  Another principle of connectivism which applies here is that “learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinion” when students are engaging with each other as well as a community of personal networks that they can learn from. Take the example of Tom, a 41 year old man who used an online community forum to learn more about living with adult-onset diabetes.  There he could connect with others who have faced similar challenges and who have gone through what he was.  It reminds me of when my daughter was diagnosed with Celiac disease at the age of 3.  We received top of the line care from the doctors, nurses, and dietitians at CHOP, but leaving each appointment I felt like my head was spinning.  Through the use of website like Beyond Celiac and attending support groups at CHOP, I was able to talk with other parents of children with Celiac disease and their advice has helped our family tremendously.