Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Knowledge Commons

With my interest in social networking in schools, I have started reading some about the knowledge commons. With the expansion of the internet, knowledge can now take on some of the characteristics of “commons” as we know it from the natural-resource world. There are two main differences though between natural resource commons and the new knowledge commons - knowledge commons are non-depletable and non-rivalrous. Knowledge resources often multiply the more people are a part of the network, so they grow in richness rather than become more scarce. Because there is not a finite amount of knowledge, there is no competition among consumers.

One of the issues with knowledge commons in schools is that it doesn’t fit the age-old paradigm of knowledge creation and consumption. This paradigm primarily rests on the idea of individualism. Because of our assessment models, learning is quite commonly perceived as individualistic. While collaboration occurs in the classroom, it does not have the same richness as a knowledge commons supported by digital technologies.

As with other commons, knowledge commons must have its own set of clearly defined norms in order to function successfully, otherwise members of the community can abuse the knowledge creation process and cause the network to degrade or even collapse. These, too, are issues that we are struggling with as we encourage a knowledge commons in school.

How do we shift the mindset (of all school community stakeholders) from learning as individualistic to learning as common? I think that is my struggle at the moment.

Posted by Randy on 12/19 at 07:40 AM
Reading • Reflection • Social Networking • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, December 17, 2007

Social Networks

In my doctoral program at UPenn, my “team” of four has been using a wiki and Skype to extend our learning between face-to-face meetings. While the tools have kept us connected on some level, I feel that we really haven’t yet experienced the benefits of the network. More on that a little later…

In the program, we are wrapping up a quantitative methods module. I suggested to one of my cohort members, Jenn (not on my team), that we establish a wiki to encourage all 22 cohort members to contribute their knowledge and understanding about statistical methods. Since we all were looking for something to tie our work together, we thought this might be a good way to tap into the thinking of other cohort members. (Surprisingly, we don’t get to do that often.) The response to the project was very positive from many cohort members. But here is the catch, and I think it is a problem with networking electronically. In order for it to work, people need to regularly participate. Otherwise, it becomes, yet again, the work of a few, while the rest sit, content and happy with their individualistic model of learning. This “project” is only a few days old, but I am interested to see how people follow through on their initial enthusiasm.

And I think follow-through is also the issue with my team. It is a lot of work to stay connected to people. And often it seems that it is more work than simply doing your own thinking in isolation. People who lead a “check off” life find connecting to people through technology a nuisance. “Just let me finish it so I can move on to the next thing - so I can check that one off, too.” Those that are really interested in learning find the payoffs of connecting far greater than work required. Count me in this second group.

At school (in my day job), I have a group of teachers working with Ning to collaborate and share ideas and multimedia. They are in three different buildings so I’m hoping this experiment will strengthen their relationships and learning between our monthly face-to-face meetings. They’ve been at this for a few weeks, and I can already see how the novelty of it is wearing off. Some need prompting and some don’t. It’s just too easy to fall back into the same old routines. Kinda like dieting, I guess…

Anyone with experiences in getting folks from 0 to 90 in not a lot of time where networking is concerned? Or is this just a hump we need to get over?

Posted by Randy on 12/17 at 10:36 AM
Leadership • Social Networking • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Inquiry

I have been thinking about the idea of leaders (and teachers) as inquirers. Unfortunately, there is little reflection and inquiry in our schools, from the highest roles down. What I am seeing (and what I am guilty of) is not asking the questions...especially the right questions. As an educational system, we are entrenched in a history (what Lankshear and Knobel call “deep grammar"). This is a history that we are not doing much to break out of. We tend do jump on the bandwagon of new initiatives without asking the WHY.

Do we as leaders model lifelong learning? Are we asking the questions that need to be asked? How can we get better at inquiring so we break away from the history of schooling? 

Posted by Randy on 12/16 at 04:21 PM
Leadership • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
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