Motivation. Technology. Facilitation. Connection. Collaboration.

(Please explore the interactive mind map above. It represents my personal learning network. Using the buttons at the top you can zoom in and out (as will your mouse's scroll wheel), fit the entire chart to the screen, and others. You can also use your mouse to drag the map around and expand each node. Nodes with a circle at the end can be expanded. Nodes with a red arrow inside of them have a link to follow. To open the link, please click the red arrow and not the node name. Thanks!)

Networking is not new. To become the best, individuals have networked with each other and master teachers for centuries. So what is new?

1. We no longer have to move to study with masters. We can study and connect with them from our homes – with our families in the next room.
2. We can study and connect with peers and masters on our own time, and often in our own way.
3. We can study and connect with peers and masters from anywhere a mobile network signal will reach … even on top of the Mogollon Rim.
4. We can reach students in the variety of ways necessary to keep them engaged in difficult academic pursuits.
5. We can build a personal work environment tailored to our learning needs and style.

I first began reaching outside of a traditional learning network as an undergraduate. With a 2400 baud modem, and the Compuserve BBS, I began to explore social and learning networks. Without realizing it, I started a personal trend of technical exploration that continues today. Reflecting on that journey, I realize that network grew proportionately to the technology I accessed. First BBS, then PINE, eMail, AOL, ICQ, MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. Now, I have them all with me, any time, on my mobile phone.

Has this changed the way I learn? I do not know yet. What I do know, is I have expedient and nearly instant access to any piece of information I need to fuel my learning. Whether it is peers, instructors, professional connections, or anything stored in the mass of the internet, when I have a question I can connect and ask just one, or practically all simultaneously.

In a post on a Walden University discussion board, Dr. Moller (2009) posits technology is an “enabler instead of a driver” of learning strategies. A fantastically hopeful comment, as it implies we have much more potential to unlock and fill. I feel the key lies in the continued growth of collaborative technologies, and the many conversations taking place about how we learn.

References
Moller, L. (2009, July 20). Course Home Page. Retrieved July 23, 2009, from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=3470109&Survey=1&47=4198219&ClientNodeID=984645&coursenav=1&bhcp=1.

Basic Instinct (sans ice pick) … (maybe)

During Howard Rheingold’s 2008 TED talk he traces a path of human development based on an inherent instinct to collaborate. Citing everything from mastodon BBQ parties to the modern economic engine, he deftly points out how our base programming may be wired to collaborate more than to dominate and defeat. While acknowledging the shrinking place of the survival-of-the-fittest, he speaks of this emergent culture of cooperative arrangements with a hopeful tone. And, I choose to believe him.

Now, there are examples of positive and negative cooperative arrangements throughout history. Some simply wanted to become king of the proverbial hill –generally for no real reason other than to prove it was possible. I imagine the populous of the world as pockets of cooperative arrangements akin to the hemispherical bubbles circling the drain after a bath. Some are countries, some are small religions, some are global industries, and some are just what is leftover. Normally, the bubbles will collide together, losing structure, and draining away with the bathwater. But, If the conditions are just right, and each bubble is strong enough to stay together, yet pliable enough to bend and merge without breaking, a single hemispheric bubble remains on top of the drain after everything else has washed away.

I like to believe that is how Rheingold sees it. If cooperative arrangements and collaboration are humankind’s basic instinct, we have a chance of not washing it all down the drain.

Of course, to reach that point we need to transform and re-educate. We need to teach as if collaboration is our first and most basic instinct. Thankfully, we have entered an era characterized by explosive growth in global communication between individuals, not just corporations and governments. Mobile phones, the semantic web, social networking, Twitter, and the promise of cloud computing increasingly support this collaboration. Constructivist theorists like D.J. Cunningham support the need for students to talk to each other, understand each other's viewpoints, and take responsibility for their own learning. Vygotsky called for strong relationships between learners, their culture, and appropriate mentors.

Rheingold calls for us all to begin and participate in the necessary “transdisciplinary discourse” to make this transformation possible. In education, that discourse must involve the _isms. What cooperative arrangements can be forged between educational theorists to create the ways of teaching necessary to foster and build a culture of collaboration?

The means exist.

The will to change must follow.