Saw this post this morning on one of my favorite blogs, The Bamboo Project Blog, by Michele Martin. I love her blog and find something valuable there on a daily basis. Truly. Michele’s post refers to a post by Christine Martell that refers to a learning framework by Ray Jimenez on social media and learning.
In reading Michele’s post I was thinking about how this still relates to the discussion that we’ve been having in our local learning community recently about “open invitations” to participate and the desire to involve everyone.
As Michele points out, some of our learners might certainly be ready to participate, but perhaps not in the way we would want them to, or in the way we think they should. I think this is really important. We may feel that it’s easy and perfectly natural to comment on blogs, edit wikis, and take part in online conversations and even if we extend an invitation to others, it may not work. We can open our arms as wide as we can, have snacks and refreshments waiting for them, and we may still not have anyone come to our party. Why? Not because they are refusing to participate.. they’re uncomfortable with the ways we’re asking them to participate.
Not only do we need to think about inviting people to be part of our community, discussions, and learning but we need to be aware of the different levels and know where our co-workers are.
I think most of us agree that we want our learners and co-workers to be creators and contributors, but they may not be ready for that. They may not feel comfortable starting a blog, creating virtual content or even editing your wiki. In fact, I feel completely comfortable as a content creator and even I’m intimidated by editing a wiki. No idea what it is, but I’m always a little hesitant to do it.
That being said, these are all things to think about as we think more about “Open Content” and invitations to participate. Not everyone’s ready for the four-course meal. We might need to just offer some appetizers at first. At least that way, everyone’s at the party.
4 responses so far ↓
Michele Martin // July 1, 2008 at 2:32 pm |
Shannon–thanks for the high praise!
I agree that we definitely need to meet learners where they’re at in terms of the participation comfort level. I think that inviting them into participation is probably an overlooked, but obviously critical first step.
At the same time, I worry that some might look at this and say that we should be OK with having people stay in “spectator” or “lurker” status. There was a time when being a passive recipient of information might have worked, but increasingly I’m seeing that the really successful folks are those who are comfortable with and literate in these kinds of technologies and ways of working with other people. Not saying that you have to master every tool, but if you aren’t comfortable with creating online content by editing a wiki, creating a profile or commenting on a blog post, I think that eventually you’ll be left behind.
I keep thinking about Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind.” He says that if it can be done better or faster by a computer or it can be done more cheaply by someone in a country where labor is cheaper, then that’s work that will leave the US. Being a creator is really about adding value, and as a skill set, that’s increasingly going to be the primary route to the best work in the future.
I’ve come to believe that it’s our responsibility to help people see this and teach them how to add value of their own. It’s asking to break years of habits that they have as passive recipients of information, but I believe that it’s critical to future success.
micala // July 1, 2008 at 2:35 pm |
Michele,
I completely and totally agree with you. I see this on a daily basis and I work with such a wide range of people that some of them are absolutely on the forefront of what’s going on with social media, but some of them don’t even know what a blog is.
I know the power of these tools and I would desperately love to see everyone jump right in and begin using all of these things, creating content and becoming actively engaged in the participatory culture, but it won’t happen overnight.
I think, as you do, that we need to understand that not everyone is at the ‘creator’ level yet.. but we can help them get there. Little by little, step by step by showing them how and teaching them why.
Nikki Massaro Kauffman // July 1, 2008 at 6:40 pm |
Shannon & Michele,
Great points.
I believe that interacting with information is a key component to media literacy in the information age and a valuable job skill to pass on to learners, especially those who have not grown up with technology. Perhaps here at Penn State, information literacy will some day be one of those required components to every major like writing intensive and diversity focused courses are now.
That said, I’ve spent a lot of time easing people into new technology. Some of the ways to do this include: 1) focusing on the tools that they will see as most valuable/relevant to their work or interests; 2) introducing only a few tools (one or two) at time until the are comfortable with them; and 3) making new tools look and feel like old ones (use CSS layouts and color schemes to make a wiki or blog look like it’s just a web page on your site).
Sure number #3 is really just making them take their medicine by putting it in candy, but it it gets
them to take a few bites, what’s the harm?
Cole // July 2, 2008 at 11:57 am |
I am very interested in this space — as a matter of fact it is the area I do my research. I have been thinking hard about the notion of wikis as mind tools to help learners generate connections with concepts in new ways. I’ve done some reading lately that suggests (and not surprisingly) that greater cognitive energy exerted in the *creation* of knowledge by a group of learners does in fact lead to greater depth of transferable knowledge.
One thing I am running into is the need to work up front to socialize the use of the tool. I am finding without the context of “this is helpful and here is why …” learners can be left thinking the tasks are meaningless. So in essence, I think getting to participation requires a significant amount of front loading. This is the same strategy we are trying to employe on campus with our peers. I am hoping it works!
Good post and good link. Thanks for the heads up.