This past summer, I did a project on open source and learned a lot about the nature of humans banding together as a group to create intrinsically motivated products. Open source is a great example in the technology world of how humans collaborate and work on common goals with no real reward. Rheingold spoke of the ultimatum game that economist use to determine altruistic attributes. I just finished reading Superfreakonmics where they spoke of the game and other similar experiments that have been conducted. My interpretation of the research is that most people want to work together to create a multitude of things, happiness, success, products, food, etc. These things happen with many constructivist principals in mind, such as, ownership, social negotiation, multiple perspectives.
Technology has provided a means for more people to start working together in a greater capacity. Technology allows learners to step out of their environment and enter the world which is rich with reality based opportunities that learners can experience. Technology allows learners to connect, communicate and cultivate. Students in a small town can connect to students in a large city in China and communicate on how pollution effects each environment. After learning about one another environments, students can can cultivate ideas to help combat the problem. Constructivists want learning to be relevant and complex and technology allows students the ability to take projects a step further.
The 2010 Horizon Report predicts open content will be widely adopted in one year or less while the 2010 Horizon Report k12 edition predicts collaborative environments will be widely adopted in one year or less. Both of these trends involve humans banding together to accomplish goals, although I think there is a reward. Just because the reward is not a tangible thing makes it no less real. Indeed, learners often work harder for intangible rewards than they do for tangible rewards like stickers. I am referring of course to the ideas of Alfie Kohn -> http://www.alfiekohn.org/index.php
ReplyDeleteKat,
ReplyDeleteTechnology has brought a new birth to the constructivist thoughts on learning. With the new kinds of technologies that are emerging, real experiential learning could be had. Seeing the collaboration of people from far parts of the world banding together to create new ways of dealing with old problems, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. I recently watched a program about some students in America who created mobile incubators for premature babies which was basically made to tackle the epidemic of the low mortality rate of babies in India and automatically connected this endeavor to the collaboration of students and technology to fight a problem for a common good.