A New Culture of Learning--John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas
Few things could be more exciting than opening the mail to find John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas wonderful new book, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. I was fortunate to be able to read the book in manuscript for these two extraordinary colleagues and friends and it is very exciting to hold it in my hands, between two lovely covers, and realize it is the "must read" book of the season. I will be teaching it in both of my classes, "This Is Your Brain on the Internet" and "21st Century Literacies." On the back cover, I say that "Thomas and Brown are the John Dewey of the digital age." They are!
But don't take my word for it. Another giant in the field of digital media and learning, Henry Jenkins, has just done an extensive interview with JSB and Doug Thomas, and I'm excerpting some of it below but you can read the entire interview here: http://henryjenkins.org/2011/01/a_new_culture_of_learning_an_i.html
A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, written by two of my new colleagues at the University of Southern California -- Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown.
Asked to write a blurb for this book, here's what I had to say:
A New Culture of Learning may be for the Digital Media and Learning movement what Thomas Paine's Common Sense provided for the American Revolution -- a straight forward, direct explanation of what we are fighting for and what we are fighting against. John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas lay out a step by step argument for why learning is changing in the 21st century and what schools need to do to accommodate these new practices. Using vivid narratives of people, institutions, and practices at the heart of the changes and drawing from a growing body of literature outlining new pedagogical paradigms, they place the terms of the argument in language which should be accessible to lay readers, offering a book you can give to the educator in your life who wants to become an agent of change. My hope is that our schools will soon embrace the book's emphasis on knowing, making, and playing.
This book really is a gift, one which arrived too late for the Christmas season, but just in time for the start of the new semester. I know that I will be drawing on its insights to shape my own New Media Literacies grad seminar this term and to inform the new afterschool program we are launching at the RFK Schools here in Los Angeles. I admire it for both its clarity of vision and clarity of prose, not a common combination. In the interview which follows, I play devil's advocate, challenging some of the core premises of the book, with the goal of addressing critics and skeptics who may not yet be ready to sign on for the substantive reforms in pedagogical practices and institutions they are advocating.
- Cathy Davidson's blog
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How We Can Savor Learning and Inventing Togethe
"Even" as a non-educator, Cathy, it was a thorough delight to read this book and Jenkins' review and now your post.
The most common and satisfying ways we learn and invent are not from sitting in a classroom seat being taught or trained. The world is too complex and fluid now to keep up with everything all by yourself. That doesn't mean that we aren't sought-after for our mastery of a topic or skill. It simply means we stay relevant when we engage in projects with diverse others, learning and experimenting as we go. Like children we still learn best by observing, imitating, re-mixing, making fresh mistakes and, most of all, by playing and using our imagination - with others.
While their book is aimed at transforming learning in schools every concept I read can be equally applied to any part of our lives - lived well with others. Some of my favorite quotes from this book:
* The new culture of learning gives us the freedom to make the general personal and then share our personal experience in a way that, in turn, adds to the general flow of knowledge.
* In the new culture of learning, people learn through their interaction and participation with one another in fluid relationships that are the result of shared interests and opportunity.
* Play is the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules. When play happens while learning it creates a context in which information, ideas and passions grow.
* The important thing about the Harry Potter phenomenon is not so much what the kids were learning, but how they were learning. Thought there was no teacher in this setting, readers engaged in deep, sustained learning from one another through their discussions and interactions.
* In a world of near constant flux, play becomes a strategy for embracing change rather than a way of growing out of it.
* The challenge is to find ways to marry structure and freedom to create altogether new things.
* Study groups dramatically increase the success of college students in the classroom.
* The connection between the personal and the collective is a key ingredient in lifelong learning.
* When information is stable, the explicit dimension becomes very important. The speed of light, for example, is probably not going to change....The twenty-first centry, however, belongs to the tacit. In the digital world we learn by doing, watching, and experiencing... not by taking a class or reading a manual.
* Students learn best when they are able to follow their passion and opeate within the constraints of a bounded environment. Without the boundary set by the assignment there would be no medium for growth.
* Indwelling is a familiarity with ideas, practices and processes that are so ingrained that they become second nature. When engaging the learner, we must think about her sense of indwelling, because that is her greatest source of inspiration, but it is also the largest reservoir she has of tacit knowledge.
* Dispositions indicate how a student will make connections on a tacit level... how she is likely to learn.
* Learning from others is neither new nor revolutionary; it has just been ignored by most of our educational institutions...
... and, I would add, by most of our organizations.