Reflection | Learning in the Digital Age

Reflection to Article:
Learning in the Digital Age
John Seely Brown

In the Digital Age, effective instruction must incorporate theories and principles which are similar to the activities and situations within which they are used. Knowledge is inextricably situated in the physical and social context of its acquisition and how it will be used. Even though information can be looked up in a book or retrieved online, knowledge is harder, to pick up, write down, and transfer. It resides in someone’s mind and is acquired more through assimilation. Learning has shifted from an authority-based lecture model to discovery-based learning. An integrated, multidisciplinary approach which incorporates technology, help students develop better intuition about physical phenomena. The classical boundaries separating teaching, learning, research, administration, communication, media, and play, are all brought about by these new technologies.

Michael Polanyi defines knowledge as having two dimensions, explicit and tacit. Explicit lives in books and in our brains as concepts and facts. It deals with the “know-what. The tacit dimension deals with “know-how work practices and skills. Tacit knowledge can be distributed as a shared, socially constructed understanding that emerges from collaboration. The major benefits of the Internet and other technologies is they allow the user to communicate and express themselves with images (still and moving), sound, and multiple forms of intelligence, such as abstract, social, or kinesthetic. These modalities enhance the natural ways that humans learn.

Legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) is an analytic viewpoint on a way of understanding learning and intentional instruction. Rather than memorizing formulas, learners should not only just know the “standard” answers, but the real questions, sensibilities, and aesthetics, and why they matter. In higher education, the undergraduate curriculum is often designed to focus on pre-existing knowledge. In graduate education, it is the practice, not theories, that is the most important attribute of the program. Universities have multiple communities of scholars and practices which promotes an environment of creative tension that spawns new ideas, perspectives, and knowledge. . The focus on a specific field of study in a particular community, acclimates the learner to this new social network, its character, and what joining it would entail. The students’ active participation with practitioners makes them part of the process of creating knowledge. This shifts learning from an authority-based lecture model to discovery-based learning, using a social networked learning environment, enhanced by digital libraries and other Web resources.

The rapid growth and evolving nature of literacy involves not only text but also image and screen literacy. Young learners are constantly discovering new things as they browse through emergent digital libraries and other Web resources. Learners use information and communications technology (ICT) to meet, play, date, and learn. The focus is on an active learning approach, that is, a highly collaborative, hands-on environment, with extensive use of desktop experiments and educational technology. Through various interactive, open source communities, learners learn from each other, collaborate , and create new content. Disciplines traditionally kept apart are brought together. A change in the basic vehicle used for learning has shifted from archetypical courses, lectures, and textbooks to various interactive, electronically portable media. The traditional university boundaries are expanding beyond the campus. “It is imperative that we expand our concept of literacy to include visual, audio, interactive, and combined media, all combined in accurate, well organized, pedagogically solid productions. Because of the rapid pace of technological advances and knowledge, lifelong learning is critical for continued innovation and prosperity. Educators must combine both theory and practice to help learners bridge the rapidly expanding gap between traditional and digital age learning .