JSB on Social Learning

Notes from a talk by John Seely Brown at the Collaborative Technologies Conference, on a new kind of participatory learning.  The social life of learning lives all around us.  The strongest finding of learning: the best indicator of success in college is whether that kid as figured out how to join study groups.  The social construction of understanding. John's interest is if this social learning can happen at a distance.

In an early UK Open University control group test, those who learned remotely had a half a grade better performance.  Study groups were not just talking about content, but relational skills.  And the person who was the best moderating participant later advanced to the highest level, as an HP executive. 

Shows a screenshot of a class being taught outside, in the virtual world Second Life.  The University of Phoenix just purchased and is building a massive learning island.  Wells Fargo island for teenagers to learn banking.  Shows the digitally enhanced collaboratory with backchannels rendered public (frontchannels) at USC.  The sage on the stage morphs into an emergent phenomenon.  The teacher either becomes a comedian/entertainer, or more interestingly an orchestrator and socratic challenger.  Getting students to think crritically about what they finbd on the web is an important 21st century skill, especially for our 21st century democracy (media literacy +1).  In an architecture studio, all work in progress is made public -- learning as enculturation into a practice.

Does this generalize, or scale?  So much of our schooling is Learning About, or the Explicit.  But that you can get from Google. Architectural schools are about Learning to be, the Tacit.  How do we look at learning to be, sooner?  Learning to be: enculturating into the practices of a field often via legitimate peripheral participation -- apprenticeship. 

Non-obvious examples... More and more of entertainment has you engaged in productive inquiry.  Learning environments you get for free: open source where you write code to be read, engagement through useful additions and social capital matters.  A form of apprenticeship (cognitive apprenticeship) to a virtual community of practice.  Open code, open system, open community discussion. 1 million people do open source -- and more kids today will learn about programming through these communities than in all the universities in this country. Conversations about code are rounded, where you reflect on why something is done.  A practice and a reflection on a practice.  Very powerful.

The rise of the Pro-Amateur Class (from Latin - amator: lover).  In Astronomy, a $3k Dobsonian 10" f/4.9 telescope can be added to a cheal camera, leverage open source DSP and other software and you have the equivalent of a 200" telescope that changed history just some years ago.  You can suddenly do triangulation by cooperating with other amateurs.  Nice communities of co-creation, learning and sharing.  Pro Astronomers are great at differential equations, but not good at looking at things.  Amateurs are always watching, immeadiately blog findings, gets picked up by Pros and validate and then send a signal to turn the Hubble Telescope.  Interesting discussions happen between the Pros and Ams, which is why we call them ProAms.  None of this has been planned, but we have a community of learning around concrete artifacts.

WoW and it's 8.8m players.  Saw this first in China when there was a software update and there were 150k players lined up to get the latest beta.  Quests become increasingly difficult, but from the beginning require the formation of a guild.  If you are good at pulling people together, you become a leader.  Studying the social, political and leadership skills in Warcraft, particularly with at 27 year old named Stephen.

• Creates a vision and set of values that attracts...
• Finds, evaluates and then recruits players that have a set of diverse skills and fit with your norms
• Creates a platform for apprenticeship - newbies (noobs)
• Orchestrates group strategy and governance
• Creates, sells and adheres to the governance principles for the guild and adjudicates disputes. 

Wow -- are these the fundamentals of leadership in the corporate world?  When he was doing M&A with another guild, the end of the negotiation the other guild leader asked if he could borrow his credit card.  Why?  I didn't tell you something, Stephen, I'm only 12.  If you ran a buisness like a guild it would be a disaster.  But if one imagines that a business is like a guidl the lessons learned from virtual worlds become powerful tools for effective leadership.  Don't look for direct transfer, look to imagine.

The way kids are growing up today is a lot like the way we did.  Tinkering, building, learning (and sharing more than we did).  The essence of participatory culture.

Remix has a lot to do with deep reading.  Creative reading where people fill in the backstory.  Creating meaning by integrating their imagination with that of the 'author' in remix.

A fundamental transition is happening from supply push to demand pull. It is happening in every part of our business life (from retail to media to advertising.  Finding ways to participate in the flows of knowledge -- the first reach chance to reinvent learning.  The Long Tail in education, ecology of learning/doing niches.  Demand pull: I am passionate about this niche topic.  I want to learn/do more!  Then I, as a Student, might move up to the fat part of the curve.  How do we leverage joining niche communities that are their passion to the fat tail of a core curriculum that expands upon those activites?