Technologies, Schooling, and Relevance

from Occupy Wall Street (Reilly, 2011)

I.

From the NY Times today:

“Every time I go to a new country, I buy a SIM card and activate the Internet and download the map to locate myself,” Osama Aljasem, a 32-year-old music teacher from Deir al-Zour, Syria, explained as he sat on a broken park bench in Belgrade, staring at his smartphone and plotting his next move into northern Europe.

“I would never have been able to arrive at my destination without my smartphone,” he added. “I get stressed out when the battery even starts to get low.”

Aljasem is one of the tens of thousands of migrants entering the Balkans, seeking a different way of life. According to the NY Times, WhatsApp, a cross platform messaging app is said to be an essential tool of migrants from Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

II.

My son told us yesterday that he and his gaming team are now ranked first in the United States and third internationally after the last round of competitions. His five member team hails from the United States and Canada. He'd like to attain the semi-pro level in the game in the next year or so as he is now ranked just below semi-pro. His team members range from 16 to 19 years old. This year's international pro competition paid close to a million dollars to the winners and each year sees that winning pot increase sharply as do the numbers of those watching and attending the competition in Europe where E-sports are a rage.


III.

Later today, my husband will undergo video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS).  A tiny camera (thoracoscope) and surgical instruments will be inserted into his chest, between ribs, through several small incisions. The thoracoscope will transmits images of the inside of his chest onto a video monitor, guiding the surgeon. The surgeon is not a young man. He is not a 'digital native' by any stretch--given his 40 years of experience. Fortunately, for us, his digital status has little bearing on his skill or his commitment to learn what must be learned in order to practice his work. He'll text me when he's out of surgery so we can speak.


IV.

In the next few weeks or so, most students here will have returned to a U.S. school where technologies will be doled out like prized pigs and/or kept concealed at the bottom of school bags by kids depending on each school district's definition of acceptable use. Technologies, like smart phones, will continue to be confiscated like contraband at some school sites. At other sites, teachers and administrators of the 'non-digital persuasion' will be allowed to pretend that the technological revolutions that are happening here and across the world do not affect them and by definition, their students. You can almost hear them uttering, "No need to alter how I teach."

Now, I am not suggesting educators should or should not have opinions about technologies and learning.  I'd expect most to have strong opinions. What I am saying is that as some educators and school systems continue to work as if it were the 1950s, the world beyond those school doors is quickly showing how irrelevant such positioning is.

To Err is Human, Yet at Schools...

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.  ~Niels Bohr

On Gaming and Errors

Yesterday while driving in the car my son explained that he is improving at writing code:

Invention. (Reilly, 2008)

When I first started last summer I would get about 800 error messages and I got that down to 60 by the end of summer. The other day I got it down to 5 error messages.

My husband, Rob, quickly added that this is a gaming mentality.

Ask any gamer and he'll tell you that you learn through trial and error.

This struck me as significant.  Each week, either Rob or I have to sign a paper acknowledging each quiz and test grade my son received/earned during that week.  Next to each number, one of us signs his or her name. Some weeks Rob does this, other weeks I do it.  But it never stops or changes.  The numbers are final and we must acknowledge with ink, each performance and each "counts" towards a final marking period grade. Tests count x percentage points and quiz grades and homework count as well. 

It's all quite logical and explained at back to school night. Yet, it seems to me as if the logic is really faulty if the outcome is learning. For there are no second chances or even the understanding of how any one performance may be viewed in light of any other performance.

Eggs in a carton. Each separate, never mixed for fear of cracking.

There is no learning along the way. There are starts and stops and even these don't seem to be connected.

On Schooling

from this website

Last year, my son arrived at a new school in March and took a mathematics test three days after arriving. He failed the test, earning less than half of the available points.  A week of so later the mathematics teacher phoned to tell me she thought my son should be moved from the advanced math class as he was not doing well.  I inquired why and she mentioned the test score.  As we talked a bit it became evident that he was tested on material he simply had not been present to learn.  There was an assumption that "he should have known" the material. The test score would count toward his final average, I was warned. This seemed like misinformed mathematics to me.  I suggested as much and although the teacher agreed, the test score remained an indicator of his knowledge and performance.

But what did it actually mean?  How was it received? What did my son learn about his potential as a mathematician?  This is a child who at 21 months took the condiments from the refrigerator and organized them into two groups in an attempt to balance the lot. 11 years later he would confide to me that he just isn't' good in math, as in the class.  This is what he has learned at school. He has confused mathematics know-how with mathematics performance at school.

I never hear my son say, I am not a good gamer.  800 error messages and he sees these as an indicator of what he will learn, not as an indicator of how 'smart' he is.   School is something quite different.  In September, a friend told me about a virtual Java course at Stanford and I mentioned it to my son.  At first he seemed interested in attending. Yesterday he announced he had decided against this.

It's school.  I'd rather figure out Java like I do everything else. On line and figuring it out with friends and YouTtube.

Occupy Your Classroom

Circa 1967 (M.A. Reilly, 2009)

We make much of NCLB, its restrictive and onerous assessment practices, and we are right to do so.  I often wish though that the same educators who are vocal about state assessments might deeply inquire about their own assessment practices.  Now, I realize that there are many who do.  There are many who have more informed practices.  And there are many who simply issue grades based on some simple algorithm.

How is it that in a gaming culture, error is a way of learning and yet at schools, error is a form of damnation?  How many children sit in classrooms where they are terrorized by failing?  How many hear their teachers say to them or someone else in the class that if you fail you will be left back?  How many parents use their children's performances via grades at school as bragging rights, as bumper stickers? What is a way out of this mindless entrapment?

Karl Fisch (@karlfisch), Jose Vilson (@TheJLV) and Chad Sansing (@chadsansing) recently blogged about educators occupying their own classrooms.

Jose offered five ways for educators to occupy their classrooms.  He closed by writing:

We ought to rebel. Our best rebellion must come in the form of assuring our students do as well as possible. Outside politics have deteriorated, not elevated, the classroom experience for far too long. Before we can truly have a revolution of any nature, we must first shore up the parts of our job we can immediately control. It starts with the 30 / 60 / 90 / 150 students we have under our care.

Shore up the parts of the job we have immediate control over.

In a post dated October 7, 2011, Karl wrote:

That instead of blaming “the system,” we should realize that we are the system, and we should advocate for our students when we see things that we don’t believe are in their best interests. And that we, just like the protesters in the middle east, and just like the #occupywallstreet folks, have access to tools that Clay Shirky has shown us make it much easier to not only organize, but to actually effect change. That, really, this thing we call school doesn’t happen without us.

Be responsible as we are the system.

Chad closed his post by suggesting five proactive actions.  The last one, Build communities instead of reinforcing expectations, seems to be at the heart of what I am attempting to convey here.

Want to occupy your classroom?

Begin by asking yourself: Do the practices I espouse help to build a culture where to err is not only human, but necessary? As James Joyce penned in Ulysses,  "A man of genius makes no mistakes.  His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery"

What portals will you afford your students?

We are Pando: Rhizomatic Learning*

Candid (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

It is an unbearably hot day as my husband, son and I slowly motor home to New Jersey from Washington D.C.  From the back of the car I can hear my son talking and I turn and see him hunkered down in the seat, wearing headphones and holding his phone in one hand.

Who are you talking to?

Tom.

Tom?

Yeah, Tom from London.

‘Tom from London’ is a 13-year old who plays Minecraft on my 12-year-old son's server.  He and a dozen boys, ranging from 9- to 15-years-old from North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, are avid Minecraft players on the server. Their play represents a contrasting way to think about learning from what is offered as usual fare at schools.  James Gee and Elizabeth Hayes (2011) might classify the boys’ play as an example of a passionate affinity space where “people organize themselves in the real world and/or via the Internet (or a virtual world) to learn something connected to a shared endeavor, interest, or passion” (p. 69). 

I think of passionate affinity spaces as rhizomatic and want to suggest that such learning offers us an alternative to schooling.  A rhizome, the horizontal stem of a plant, usually found underground, sends out roots and shoots, each of which can be self-sustaining.  Margie Driscoll (2004) defines rhizome as:

a tangle of tubers with no apparent beginning or end. It constantly changes shape, and every point in it appears to be connected with every other point (p. 389).

Now think about the boys and their play. They hail from across the globe and horizontally connect with one another in this passionate affinity space where they learn deeply.

For more than a decade, I have been considering how the rhizome might function as metaphor and model for education.  The traditional view of education situates schooling as a function of transference of expert-determined content from teacher to student. U.S. school systems tend to rely on hierarchy as the privileged school organization method used to distribute content and pedagogical practices, most often in the form of sanctioned programs developed by external experts and then purchased for teachers who are told to transfer the content to students.

The Constancy of Waves (M.A. Reilly, 2010)

In contrast a rhizomatic learning community is a fluid collective where participants dwell in the middle of things and where learning emerges informed by a blend of explicit and tacit knowledge. In conceiving of rhizomatic learning, it helps to think of learners resembling a sea of "middles,” who are continuously formed and reformed based on alliances determined by needs, interests, directions, questions, redirections, assessments, and commitments. Unlike the design of many traditional schools, a rhizomatic learning space is based on joining and rejoining.

In rhizomatic learning, thinking resembles the tangle of roots and shoots, both broken and whole.  Problem framing and decision-making rest with all learners. Again, Driscoll’s description of rhizomatic learning is important. She writes:

Break the rhizome anywhere and the only effect is that new connections will be grown. The rhizome models the unlimited potential for knowledge construction, because it has no fixed points…and no particular organization (p. 389).

Historically, when confronted with student achievement concerns, there has been a tendency to tighten control in an effort to increase learning largely because what has counted as knowing has been limited to a perceived ‘set’ body of content.  Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown (2011) describe this learning :

…as a series of steps to be mastered, as if students were being taught how to operate a machine or even, in some cases, as if the students themselves were machines being programmed to accomplish tasks. The ultimate endpoint of a mechanistic perspective is efficiency: the goal is to learn as much as you can, as fast as you can (Thomas & Brown, Location 327 of 2399).

In this mistaken schema, knowledge has been consistently situated as stable—as that which can be listed in a set of standards and given to teachers to transfer. 

But we know that knowledge is not stable (Schon, 1983; Thomas & Brown, 2011). Thomas and Brown state, "[m]aking knowledge stable in a changing world is an unwinnable game” (Location 503 of 2399).   Knowledge actually has never been stable, but given the disruptive power of the Internet, what counts as knowledge is a shifting matter that is more easily recognized, especially by those holding power whose concept of knowing in the past was often situated as truth. One only has to think of the Great Chain of Being to understand how the sanctity of knowing was often a matter of power.

In contrast to such certainty, Thomas and Brown posit that there is a new culture of learning informed by

a massive information network that provides almost unlimited access and resources to learn about anything…[and] a bounded and structured environment that allows for unlimited agency to build and experiment with things within these boundaries (Location 63 of 2399).

This new culture of learning is inherently rhizomatic as it orients itself horizontally, not vertically, requiring us to value tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge--knowing more than one can tell--requires a decidedly different type of learning environment than what is currently favored at school where knowledge transfer is the privileged method. Tacit knowledge is not acquired from other; it requires learning through mind, body and senses and is facilitated by experimentation and inquiry.

At Play

For gamers, like my son, experimentation and inquiry are the methods most often employed when solving design and game-based problems. For the last several months I have been researching the learning that takes place inside my son’s Minecraft play with his on-line friends.  Five dominant learning trends have emerged out of this rhizomatic environment and one societal insight.

1.    Play matters and is a means by which learners come to know their relationship to others. The learning that happens between and among the boys is play-based and informed by their interest in experimenting and imagining. For example, my son developed a vending machine in Minecraft. Originally the buyer would place a coin in the machine and would receive however many items as s/he wanted.  This proved to be a bit impractical and over time rather dull and with the help of another player, my son modified the idea so that one coin would get a player one item. This idea was later modified again so that the player would also get his coin returned along with the item. To make these alterations required changing the wiring so that the machine reset after the item was delivered and that the delivery of the new item and the return of the coin were synchronized. Making these changes happen required playfulness, not linearity. As my son explained, “I had to fool around a bit and test out ways to make the pressure plate work. I couldn’t see how it would be possible.” When I asked him why he would return the coin to the player, he said that he didn’t want to exclude anyone from playing. Whereas everyone on the server had some coin they could use, not all had the same. “I wanted them to make a commitment by playing a coin, but I didn’t want to take their coins. We’re friends.”

2.    Sustained conversation represents the dominant method for inquiry and is suggestive of the boys’ emerging sense of agency. My son engages in sustained conversations via Skype with the other players in order to brainstorm, innovate, find multiple solutions, complete tasks, hypothesize, and engage in play. Talk is important and in the horizontal world of game playing, it is not limited to or controlled by a teacher. John Goodlad (2004) reported in his research about schools that teachers “out-talked the entire class of students three to one” (p. 229). Central to these learners’ Minecraft play is the sense of agency they possess. Thomas and Brown (2011) explain, "unlike traditional notions of learning which position the learner as a passive agent of reception, the aporia/epiphany structure of play makes the player's agency central to the learning process. How one arrives at the epiphany is always a matter of the tacit. The ability to organize, connect, and make sense of things is a skill characteristic of a deep engagement with the tacit and the process of indwelling" (Location 1381 of 2399).

3.    The players participate in collaborative knowledge-making (Cormier, 2008) in which they share screens, work in tandem, continue and revise one another’s tentative ideas in an effort to solve design problems and complete tasks. Engaging in trial and error, experimenting, making use of on-line and off-line resources, and altering established models are some of the ways the boys accomplish game-based tasks. Interestingly when I ask my son how something in the game came to be he is unable to attribute it to a single player. The knowledge produced does not belong to one person, but rather is composed collectively. Dave Cormier (2008) explains, "rhizomatic model of learning…is not driven by predetermined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process" (np).

4.    These rhizomatic learning spaces the boys inhabit are inherently native to their own ground even as they involve learners from across vast geographic spaces. Membership in the game shifts and changes across time and expertise is not determined by social markers such as age, race, or credentials—although gender does seem to be a condition presently.  As learners work alone, in pairs, small groups, and large collectives--new alliances form and break. The boys’ game playing represents a rhizomatic map; an open possibility that is: “detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted, to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2002, p.12).

5.    The players choose to participate in hard work each and every day. They set tasks to be completed and establish timelines to do so. As Jane McGonigal (2011) reports: “Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves” (p. ). Choice matters and learning is fun, although sadly most of the boys do not seem to characterize their play in the games as learning. The exception to this is the boy from Canada.

6.    Game play leads to developing novel products in the virtual world that could have implications in the actual world. For example, a few months after my son viewed images I had made in Camden, NJ of partially demolished and boarded buildings, he showed me a self-repairing bridge and building he had designed in Minecraft. He suggested that if infrastructures such as buildings and bridges could self-repair, then people living in urban areas where poverty and societal neglect have dominated the landscape would be able to live in better conditions.

When I ask my son what he has been learning he says he’s learned how to work with others; how to search, locate, and evaluate information; how to run an effective server and negotiate a contract with a company to host the server; how to barter services in exchange for money to pay for the server; how to explain an installation process of mods to others; how to create a mod; how to anticipate a partner’s play in a game; how to build a structure with someone not in the same room; how to imagine a place and build it; how to give and take ideas; how to make mistakes in order to progress in a game; how to build a design based on someone’s idea; how to script; how to model; how to resolve social problems when they arise; how to use resources, online and offline, to guide building; how to make games inside of games; how to make films and upload them to YouTube; and how to narrow the focus of a film. During this learning, the boys are also learning about one another: siblings, where they live, currency, geography, food, politics, and all things Minecraft. My son is adamant that this playing is not learning.

It's not like school, he tells me repeatedly.

Sadly, I think he's right.

Applying Rhizomatic Sensibilities to ‘Learner’ Design

Counting (M.A. Reilly, 2010)

So, if rhizomatic learning such as my son experiences in his game-playing is not like school, how do we begin to make the necessary changes so that children choose to work hard and learn deeply?  Continuing the current push by federal and state governments for increased school standardization is not an answer. An important shift needs to occur in order for the tight grip of school standardization to be loosened.  Thomas and Brown (2011) identify three critical dimensions of learning: knowing, making, and playing. Such learning is antithetical to standardization. 

We need alternatives to the traditional method of industrial schooling.

As we begin to name alternative learning experiences, such as passionate affinity spaces, as viable learning--the idea of school as the de facto response to the question--“How do we educate children?”--will be challenged.  Certainly, there have been alternatives to traditional school raised and offered in the past.  What makes these times different is that in the past, it was difficult, if not improbable, to connect innovators who were challenging the status quo of schooling.  That is not the case today. Mass can be built by connecting those of us offering alternatives. Connecting with one another is rhizomatic.

So it is not a single reform method that is being offered. We have been too long trying to find a single reform. Rather, to disrupt the established power of schooling requires a long tail revolution. Chris Anderson explains:

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers.

 

It's not about offering the reform answer, but rather remaining in the middle where connections can be made and remade.  It's about each of us doing great work, not work that needs to be replicated, but rather work that is unique, native to its own ground.  The challenge is to know we are there and to connect our work.

To connect great work is an antidote to mass standardization.

Leveraging social media to share stories and work, to try on tentative ideas, and to establish patterns are all critical.  Connecting and showcasing the small triumphs that alone may feel insubstantial, yet together represents a mass.

This is the work before each of us. On my own, I am one person.  Alongside you, I am  Pando**, a rhizomatic triumph.

Works Cited:

Anderson, Chris. (2004). The theory of the long tail. Retrieved on July 27, 2011 from: http://www.squidoo.com/longtail .

Cormier, Dave. (2008). “Rhizomatic education: Community as curriculum.” Retrieved on 2.28.11 from http://davecormier.com/edblog/2008/06/03/rhizomatic-education-community-as-curriculum/ .

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. (2002). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Continuum. 

Driscoll, Marcy P. (2004). Psychology of Learning and Instruction, 3rd Edition. Allyn & Bacon.

Goodlad, John. (1984). A place called school. New York: McGraw-Hill.

McGonigal, Jane. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. New York: Penguin Press.

Schön, Donald. (1983). The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.

Thomas, Doug & John Seely Brown. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Create Space: Kindle.

*This post is cross-referenced . It serves as the forward to the the new text, be you: [a quiet revolution] and also a slideshare of the book which is so much bigger than this single post might ever be. It exemplifies rhizomatic thinking and being. This text has been reviewed and responded to by Monika Hardy and Thomas Steele-Malley, both of whom greatly helped me to clarify my intentions when what I wanted to say was still quite cloudy. Love you guys.

**Pando: Also known as the Trembling Giant, Pando is a clonal colony of a single male Quaking Aspen located in Utah. Each genetically-identical individual tree (or “stem”) is connected by a single root system. Spreading across more than 100 acres, Pando is believed to be over 80,000 years old and collectively weighs over 6,600 tons, making it the heaviest organism on the planet, as well as one of the oldest." from Leaf and Limb Tree Service blog

#AskObama What If We Have it All Wrong?

I tried writing a question to President Obama and realized that what I needed to ask required more context than 140 characters might offer.  I was wondering if President Obama has the will & the courage to not emphasize standards and testing that his administration has either established or continued from the Bush years? In other words (to borrow from Reagan [clearly a first for me]} -- Can our President JUST SAY NO to standards & testing?

The USDOE and state governments have an unshakable belief in the efficacy and wisdom of national and state standards that outline "the big ideas" and list objectives organized by discrete subjects for teachers to follow. We are told that standards represent the important information to be transferred and that tests designed by companies are the best way to know if the designated information has been learned.  It's all very neat--very logical. But what if the initial assumption is inaccurate?  What if the emphasis on information-based knowledge coupled with a manic desire to test public school students every few weeks in mathematics and English Language Arts (via the PARCC Plan,60 million children ages 8 to 17, would be tested nine times a year) reduces learning, children's desire to learn, and teachers' agency to teach?

In Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown's (2011) A New Culture of Learning they explain that this new culture consists of two elements:

The first is a massive information network that provides almost unlimited access and resources to learn about anything. The second is a bounded and structured environment that allows for unlimited agency to build and experiment with things within these boundaries (Location 63 of 2399).

In contrast to this new culture of learning, we have the mechanistic view of education that President Obama's education policies and practices are maintaining. Thomas and Brown describe the mechanistic approach:

Learning is treated as a series of steps to be mastered, as if students were being taught how to operate a machine or even, in some cases, as if the students themselves were machines being programmed to accomplish tasks. The ultimate endpoint of a mechanistic perspective is efficiency: the goal is to learn as much as you can, as fast as you can (Location 327 of 2399).

In the Obama plan for education, schools are places where students must demonstrate they have received the Common Core Standards and can replicate them on tests given frequently across each school year.  Failure to demonstrate that the standards have been received can lead to retention, failure, cheating, dismissal, and cash bonuses depending on your role and the outcome.  This schema is based on the belief that what we know remains stable.

In contrast in the new culture of learning it is understood that "Making knowledge stable in a changing world is an unwinnable game"(Thomas & Brown, Location 503 of 2399). Instead of valuing only explicit knowledge, we must value tacit knowledge ("We know more than we can tell" (Polanyi as quoted in Thomas & Brown, 957 of 2399).

Like many others, Thomas & Brown conclude that "Students learn best when they are able to follow their passions and operate within the constraints of a bounded environment"(1038 of 2399).  It is challenging, if not impossible, to follow one's passions when federal and state standards outline what matters and in doing so exclude opportunities for the complicated process of a young person coming to know his/her passion(s) to happen.  The very absence of choice is problematic.

Applying the New Culture of Learning: Posing Questions About Things That Matter


As I have indicated in former posts, I have been interested in watching my 12 year old learn.  He is deeply involved in Minecraft and recently learned how to turn the family computer into a Minecraft server.  When I asked him how he had learned this he said that he watched a "ton of YouTube videos" and taught himself about the computer's operating system.

He told me: "It was a lot of trial and error. A lot of experimenting." 

I also wondered what motivated him to create his own server. Why did he do it?

He said he wanted a place where he and his friends and people he hasn't yet met but who also like to play Minecraft could play together and chat. The multi-player aspect of gaming matters to him and motivates him to learn and want to play.  When he first began playing Minecraft he played it as a single player.  He did this for about two months and then decided that he wanted the interaction with others in the world he was designing and building. I'm encouraged that he sees people he has yet to meet as potential friends.  We have discussed safety precautions as well as the more probable scenario that he will meet people who share his interests and who help him to widen and deepen those interests through play and chat. (See Will Richardson's 8 Shifts for Every Classroom: Shift 1: Do Talk to Strangers).

In the world he and others are building, my son made a replica of the Parthenon.  When I asked him how he built it he explained that he had downloaded different images of the Parthenon taken from different angles and then used the images to think about the exterior and interior of the structure as he built his replica. When he had a question, he did an image search.  He also said that he was disappointed as he could not figure out how to build a replica of the statue of Athena.

My son's interest in the Parthenon was tweaked when I told him that two high school students where I work had created a replica of the Palace of Fishbourne in Minecraft.  He figured out how to contact them via their server and was soon interacting with them.  He wanted to do what they had done: build a server and infuse a sense of history into the play.

Again Thomas and Brown discuss the importance and centrality of play, referencing Johan Huizinga (Homo Ludens): "...play is not merely central to the human experience, it is part o f all that is meaningful in human culture. Culture...does not create play; play creates culture" (Location 1359 of 2399).

Central to my son's play in Minecraft, as well as his friends who are often at our home playing or on line playing-- is the sense of agency they possess.  What I find interesting is none of the boys would be considered honor roll students. Some self describe themselves as having reading problems and disliking reading.  Some describe themselves as being "bad in math."  Many have comments on report cards that say: Easily distracted. Not working to potential.  Some have been classified hyperactive. Yet all can design and build intricate worlds with harbors full of ships and various types of homes with rooms serving different purposes, and farms, and self-repairing bridges, and portals to name but a few things. They can do this for hours.

Thomas & Brown discussing agency explain that "unlike traditional notions of learning which position the learner as a passive agent of reception, the aporia/epiphany structure of play makes the player's agency central to the learning process, How one arrives at the epiphany is always a matter of the tacit. The ability to organize, connect, and make sense of things is a skill characteristic of a deep engagement with the tacit and the process of indwelling" (Location 1381 of 2399).

My son built a server as he is in search of a guild: a group of dedicated players who actively participate in the making of the game, framing and posing questions, using answers to generate more questions, and attending to design challenges and other problems as they arise.

So Where To?

The learning world we need to engender looks little like the structure of school we know today. It is not informed by a list of standards, regardless of how clever those standards may or may not seem to be. Learning is not satisfied by having patients receive knowledge and replicate that information on national tests.  Such passivity dulls interest.

Instead, a shift needs to happen. Instead of schools being the locus of learning, we need to be open to seeing learning opportunities beyond the classroom and valuing such experiences instead of situating them as marginal.  This means that we need to be learners as well.  There are educators I have worked with or met via social networking that I would love to have looking in as my son and his friends play.  I imagine teachers like Harry Sugar or David Wees whose keen knowledge of mathematics might shape (bound) occasions based on the game playing that might help the boys to name the mathematics they are using as well as the naive understandings they may well have.

When I think about learning that is needed, I imagine a guild as well: a collection of people who are committed to learning and connected through interests and mediated online and in person. I like the idea of a bounded environment where experimentation happens and agency is privileged. I appreciate the understanding that knowledge is changing at a rate that defies us naming it, teaching it, and regurgitating it on tests. I imagine experiential learning and tacit knowledge coupled with some explicit knowledge mattering. Instead of sitting and watching, learners (students, teachers, mentors, community based experts) would be knowing, making, and playing.

How and what should be locally determined and informed by learners' interests.

Curious as to what you think & I will continue this...

Self-Directed & Collaborative Learning via Minecraft

Interior Screen Shot of Art Gallery from Minecraft Deigned by Devon

When I went to Columbia University, I went there for one reason: to learn how to theorize. My dissertation [Courting (in)Stability] was a rather unpolished attempt to compose a theory of learning built upon the twin ideas of folding time-space and dialogism, neither of which I understood all too well.  That was nearly 20 years ago. What I actually learned at Columbia, mostly through dialogue with Ruth Vinz, was to privilege uncertainty--be it in the dissertation process or other types of learning and living. Being uncertain is a stance that is informed through observation and wonder.  I have been wondering about play and learning and so I have been watching the last few weeks as my son and now several of his friends play Minecraft. I thought observing would help me to better understand learning, especially learning that happens outside the influence of school and is self-directed and collaborative.

I.
It's mid April when I mentioned to Devon a neat game I had downloaded, Minecraft and explain it is a game where you build a world and work to survive.
He's a bit skeptical and asks, "Is it educational?"
"Not in the way you mean," I assure. "Take a look if you want."
That was Friday, mid April. By a week later, he had built a multi-room and leveled home that included a waterfall and an elevator that opened into a glass room located above the clouds. Survival was no longer a marker of progress.

Screenshot of Farm (Growing Wheat) in Minecraft, by Devon.

A week after that he "discovered" obsidian and built a transport to take him through the portal to the Nether world. His game play was not restricted to one world as he had been designing and building  multiple worlds. It was about this time that his friends started playing. Teaching his friends to play was all hands on and began and ended with a few hints to get going and the suggestion, If you don't know what to do, go to Youtube.

A week after that he began to build intricate designs that included lava and water flows, a house that included an art gallery and had electricity, a gigantic electrically powered roller coaster that ended where you started, farming, and controls to make the place, peaceful and multiple trips to the Nether world.


It was about this time that Devon and a friend, Damian, decided they needed to show what they were doing to others.
I mentioned Jing as a way to capture what he was doing in Minecraft.
"J-i-n-g? Is it an app or on the Internet?"
"You can download it from the Internet."

II. 
Devon and Damian set about making their first two Jing movies about how to build a transport to the nether world and by dinnertime were waiting on the films to be processed so they could be uploaded to YouTube. Neither child asked for my assistance.  They did not need instructions to download or use Jing.  Now and again I could hear when they reached a dead end and had to retrace, abandon, or figure out the problem in some new way. The language I heard was not defeatist, but rather words and tone that suggested curiosity and encouragement of one another, and lots of laughter.  Some, No no and a lot of Yes, like that.  What I noticed is that they did not outline their movie before making it.  They dove in.

I noticed that after their first attempt at Jing, Devon said to Damien, "I think we should skip the whole beginning and just get to the part about making obsidian. Who's going to want to sit through all that?"
"Yeah you're right. If they're making a portal, they know all that stuff already."

Screenshot of Portal.

Screenshot of the Nether World

We might label that idea as revision and narrowing the focus.  For the boys it simply made sense as they were doing what Aristotle said writers need to do, consider audience. They did not need to define vocabulary terms or use terms in a sentence. They did not need to outline the steps they would take before taking them.  They didn't need to do a lot of what gets privileged as important learning in school and I am hoping that gives you pause.

What they did need was some relevant prior knowledge about the way "how-to Jing films" work.  Having watched a fair amount of how-to films about Minecraft on YouTube, they had some models in mind and were delighted to find out that those movies were made using Jing.  They had to have a sense of the audience for whom they were creating the films. They needed to understand what they were going to demonstrate, but not fully.  Perhaps most important though, they needed to be willing to experiment, fail, and retry--to collaborate and to be self-directed. 


III.
Will Richardson via his post, Have Schools Reached Their Limits? shared The Right to Learn: Identifying Precedents for Sustainable Change, a white paper generated by Bruce Dixon and Susan Einhorn and informed by those who attended the Big Ideas Global Summit 2010.  About halfway through the report I stopped as I read this:

What is becoming better understood is what personal computing in the hands of learners allows. The emphasis is more about who controls the learning than about content. It’s about learners learning through the lens of topics and issues that are of interest, relevant and purposeful to them; it’s about them constructing knowledge; it’s about connecting to an unlimited resource of people, ideas, and conversations that gives all learners unique insights, insights that underpin deeper understandings about the world in which they live, and how they might act collectively to influence their world and their lives. It's about having the freedom to learn in a way that is appropriate in a modern world. It’s about acknowledging a learner’s innate drive to learn about, and understand, his or her place in the world (p. 11).

The very thinking dispositions we continuously attempt to engender in students at school are the ones I see and hear occurring as I watch my son and his friends playing Minecraft. Through self-directed and collaborative play, they continuously demonstrate what it means to be adventurous, to persist, to problem solve, to sustain intellectual curiosity, to clarify and seek understanding, to be strategic, to be intellectually careful, to seek and evaluate reasons, to be metacognitve. When they need assistance, they seek it out from resources they discover: videos about Minecraft, a Minecraft Wiki, and Minecraft apps. What's equally interesting is that not all of these resources remain valued as they learn.  Much like Lev Vygotsky describes, these scaffolds are self-destructing.

Empowering students to determine their learning matters.  In talking with Devon about what he had created in Minecraft, he explained, "People don't give people enough credit. It takes a lot to put things together and to figure it out. The roller coaster is more than a 1000 pieces of rail. It was hard to figure out slope to make the roller coaster keep going and eventually I figured out how to power it. It took a few tries." 
 

Screenshot of Roller Coaster, Designed by Devon

Screenshot of Roller Coaster, Designed by Devon