Passive into active: fostering deep changes in learning, working and life

A pioneer voice in the field of Knowledge Management, John Seely Brown wrote an enlightening paper published six years ago, which still shed light on many actual approaches on the use of the Internet as a platform for learning processes and deep transformations in work, education and life.

“Growing up digital” (2000) was written when JSB was the chief scientist of Xerox and director of Palo Alto Research Center (California, U.S.). In this work, JSB announced underpinning ideas of KM and networks-based communication and learning processes, some of them are about:

- Learning to be something, beyond learning about something. More palpable today, as the Net is allowing people a significant interactive participation in building knowledge together and putting it on practice. For example, "thousands of kids learn what it means to be a computer programmer by joining an open-source community such as Linux" -JSB mentions. Another example we can find: thousands of people learn to be agents for social change by building together a virtual community (wiki pages, forums, etc.) for demanding fair housing policies and conditions (e.g. www.viviendadigna.es; www.housepricecrash.co.uk), or even for creating world wide movements such as the World Social Forum (the first one at Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, had strong roots on an Internet based movement).

- The concept of digital bricoleur learner, beyond the abstract logic learner. Based on an former concept studied by Claude Lévi-Strauss almost a century ago, "it has to do with abilities to find something -an object, tool, document, a piece of code, etc.- and to use it to build something you deem important" (Idem). JSB says judgement is inherently critical to becoming an effective digital bricoleur. We do good judgements from a social-based learning process. The Internet tools (Web 2.0) have the potential to foster users' own pathways of learning and social elaboration.

- Two dimensions of knowledge: explicit and tacit (additional fundamental idea on this paper, which is still prevalent in KM). The first dimension is about understanding abstract concepts (at an individual level) and sharing best practices by storytelling (at a group's level). The second one is about intuitive skills and know how (at individual level), and learning styles of work and practices (at group level). JSB talked about the "knowing communities of practice" as a social "fabric" emerging from sharing tasks and knowledge, but mainly, from the shared concern about how to learn.

- Learning ecology, as a consequence of diversity and adaptation in a system such as the Internet, mainly featured by openness and equity: many authors interweaving different "knowledge niches".

What prevails in these ideas is the power of the Internet for allowing users to have a more participative social role: they are shifting -or combining- passive into active, readers into writers, learners into knowledge creators, consumers into producers as well.

What has all this stuff to do with management + ethics? Maybe nothing, maybe everything.

[Tags]: Growing up digital, John Seely Brown web page, New Learning Environments for the 21st Century

Removing learning and learning again (2.0 II)

1. What does learning mean in a new information environment fostered by Web 2.0?

• Essentially it could mean new social patterns of behaviour, related to openness and sharing contents.
• Users find out they can be publishers of their own contents, and take advantage from this possibility.
• Users want to share information and any kind of content (images, sound, music, texts, etc.) among people with common interests.
• Users are interested in reshaping and repurposing contents, offering their own version, which means developing their critical and creative thinking (welcome Creative Commons!).
• Each user is a powerful node in a open network of knowledge sharing.
• Characteristics of the user experience in this new knowledge environment determine (and reflect) the way people communicate and learn: it’s a continuous process embedded in work and life.

2. What does it mean in terms of users empowerment?

• Users don’t need intermediaries for accessing, selecting, filtering, cataloguing and building new knowledge (Wikis, Blogs, RSS, Podcasting, and so on… are features of this hyper-connectivity).
• Traditional roles in education, information and even entertainment systems are transformed: teachers and journalist could be best understood as “moderators” (or e-moderators) facilitating ways for users to manage the informational chaos, rather than being the unique authorised voice about any issue. Teachers should be more than ever “the guide on the side” rather than the “sage on the stage” into communication processes addressed to foster learning.
• Users have a new understanding of power in terms of information and therefore, knowledge. This is no more a restricted field for authorised and licensed professionals. Everyone can have their say…although those people writing on a wiki page, for instance, are exactly those users that really knows an specific issue. The knowledge network naturally weaves itself.
• It’s an empowering phenomenon, since it breaks down a unidirectional model of information and knowledge transmission, giving users a wide range of possibilities to relate events, information, history, and therefore, allowing a self elaboration of those events.
• Introducing web 2.0 resources and philosophy into the field of teaching and learning, could mean turning many things upside down, among them, the instrumental use of educational system for indoctrinating purposes, where learners only know the institutional version of things, taught in order to perpetuate the establishment. What could be the scenario where learners have their own media to create and deliver contents and works, having free access to all sort of sources and also, offering free access to all kind of readers as well? What if the new role of teachers in schools and universities is to help students to weave history from different threads, contrasting peers opinions and opening minds -by means of the Internet open resources-, instead of talking alone in classroom in a traditional transmission of knowledge?

3. Who are these learners / users?

• The interesting thing is that these learners will be / are consumers and employees, cultivating new approaches towards the consumption and working practices.
• But users will be / are employers and producers as well, transforming their approach on working relationships and their understanding of consumers expectations.