Thanks to Anonymous for sparking this week's post. Anonymous is Jean, my sister-in-law who is a middle-school teacher in NJ.
Jean responded to my question: What affect has new media had on your work and learning? Her answer was visceral - like the affect of new media is at the core of her everyday experience as a teacher. Indeed, the new media affect seems to help describe her relationships with her students - each of them standing on an opposite side of the digital divide. The students owning their personal learning tools, and she owning the responsibility for their learning of the curriculum adults deem important for them to learn.
Jean's posting is a very insightful depiction of life on the front lines in an institution that is being over taken by the everyday experience of those who are relied upon for its reproduction. What will become of institution of education if those responsible for maintaining it - Jean and her students - can no longer achieve what they are there to by the means ascribed? And even more frightening, what will happen to Jean's mission to foster student's learning and development if the institution of education fails to keep pace with their everyday reality and needs?
Real learning for Jean's students is fun, so education should also be fun. Students want 'edutainment'. The educational experience should look and feel like the way they learn. It should be engaging, it should take their interests seriously - it should put them in control of the learning process and allow them to cut and paste, and borrow from others, to build on what they and others know in order to create something new and then to share it with the world - not just put it on the refrigerator, but put it on line to get feedback, not just from parents and teachers but from peers or experts in China, Ireland, or on the other end of NJ.
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to depict a new media utopia where everyone learns from everyone all the time. Indeed what happens if teachers like Jean are not supported in their efforts to keep pace with her student's needs? The kids won't wait! So who will guide and encourage them to look deeper at the assumptions, social structures, ideology underlying the tools they engage; what happens if no one is there to help them approach their learning with rigor and 'discipline'? Indeed, what becomes of those kids who, like their teachers, lack access to these tools in the fist place. Will they also lack access to the political, economic, and social world their generational cohorts will most certainly create?
Rather than promoting new media for all, I am pointing to the power of new media tools, and perhaps more importantly their ability to disrupt the power structures in society and our institutions. Some individuals like Jean's students now own the tools of production. Yes, the tools Jean's students use for learning will be the very same tools (albeit more enhanced) they will own and demand to use when they arrive in the workplace in the next 5 to 10 years.
So Jean's experience in the institution of school may be a harbinger of things to come for those of us who work and learn in the institutions of adult life. Her students will soon be our employees, clients, patients, vendors, cohorts, and colleagues and we will look to them to help uphold our rules, standard practices, and procedures. I argue, they will not stand with us on common ground. They will see their work and learning, their responsibilities to work, the role work plays in their everyday experience, what it means, and how to engage in it quite differently than many of us of an older generation do.
In writing her post, Jean was afraid her experiences were not real world enough to be share on my blog, but my fear is that her experience is all too real. Jean may be like the canary in the coal mine - our early warning system that something is terribly out of balance in our ecosystem.
My question is: are you and the institutions where you live and work any more prepared for the new and disruptive ways Jean's students approach and engage their world than Jean?
Thank you Jean for providing this week's grist for the mill.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Boundaryless Work?
Thanks to Peter for sparking this, my second posting.
I concluded my first post by asking ...“What affect has new media had on your work and learning?”
And Peter responded....“New media hasn’t changed my life....it is my life!”
I find this response remarkable in many ways – but here I consider two.
First, Peter's comment caused me to notice how I think about the place of new media in the sequence of people’s career trajectory. By asking about the affect of new media on work and learning, I assume most people encounter new media after they enter into a career. Peter’s response reminds me that this sequence of events (a career followed by an encounter with new media) is not the same for everyone. For some, like Peter their involvement in new media is followed by work and learning and this sequence may make a big difference for the significance of new media in everyday life.
For me, and perhaps others of my generation (Generation Jones) new media potentially disrupts our work and learning – it 'affects' our work and learning for it may change what we do in some way. Like this blog for example, it is changing the way I present my research findings and it may also change the way I write. I struggle to figure out how to integrate into my everyday experience - you may note that this is only my second post since launching last week.
For Peter, and perhaps others of his generation and new media community, new media has no affect on their work and learning for as Peter puts it, it is my ‘life’. It is already an integrated part of his everyday life.
My second point is what I find most remarkable about Peter’s comment. Not only is new media his life, it also appears as though his work and learning are synonymous with his life. Peter answers a question about his work and learning with a statement about his life – it like work, learning, and living are all somehow part of the same activity.
Social researchers claim that the division of labor - including the division between work and everyday life, reflects social purposes as well as social relationships. Work activity itself is recognized as perhaps the most significant mechanism for the socialization of adults. Indeed, throughout history the organization of production has explained how people and groups come together, form bonds, pursue common goals, and learn and develop as individuals and as a culture.
Barley & Kunda (2001) in an excellent essay on the need for more research on the changing nature of work, observe that in pre-modern, agrarian society people were socialized into a communal division of labor. The concept of work was unremarkable for it was an integrated and natural function of communal life. As the industrial revolution took hold, people left their small communities and took on jobs and began to separate their work - physically, temporally, socially, intellectually, and emotionally from other spheres of life. Industrial or economic modes of production became the dominate mode for organizing human production and as a consequence, class positions and work roles became the dominate mechanisms for adult socialization.
However we all know what has happened to the industrial 'job'! Let's just say it is not your father's job anymore! We are all well aware of the new formats for organizing production - indeed networks and other more fluid organizational formats are not that new anymore.
Salling Olsen (2001) claims these more fluid organizational formats and the new productive relationships they generate, have broken down the structures that once separated work from everyday life. Work requires much more individual responsibility for the development of skills, careers, and identities - individuals are called upon to become active agents in creating the circumstances of their own socialization.
And this is where Peter's comment and my research intersect. The focus of my research is on work and learning and the apparent break down of the boundaries between the two once distinct activities in industrial society. One was educated, prepared for work, and then entered into a career track that guided or even helped to pull them along - up the ladder - to more knowledge, expertise, and for some, prestige. Workplace learning (my field) was organized to help individuals learn the new knowledge and skill required to progress up these pre-existing career ladders.
But now, many of the traditional career ladders have broken down, and where they remain, many people are thwarted in upward progression by steep learning curves, as well as industrial restructuring or other forms of economic disruption. This is all having a huge affect on the social institution of school and on people like me who have spent their careers working to support learning in the workplace. We must rethink conventional notions about the relationship between work and learning as well as our understanding of how individuals are socialized in society in the new structures that are emerging for organizing production today.
Is work once again becoming ubiquitous in society? Some argue that work and by extension, careers are now boundaryless with people taking on up to seven distinctly different roles in production over their lifetime. Is this your experience - or do you experience a sense of coherence in the numerous work roles you may have taken on in your career?
My thanks once again to Peter for providing the grist for the mill.\
I concluded my first post by asking ...“What affect has new media had on your work and learning?”
And Peter responded....“New media hasn’t changed my life....it is my life!”
I find this response remarkable in many ways – but here I consider two.
First, Peter's comment caused me to notice how I think about the place of new media in the sequence of people’s career trajectory. By asking about the affect of new media on work and learning, I assume most people encounter new media after they enter into a career. Peter’s response reminds me that this sequence of events (a career followed by an encounter with new media) is not the same for everyone. For some, like Peter their involvement in new media is followed by work and learning and this sequence may make a big difference for the significance of new media in everyday life.
For me, and perhaps others of my generation (Generation Jones) new media potentially disrupts our work and learning – it 'affects' our work and learning for it may change what we do in some way. Like this blog for example, it is changing the way I present my research findings and it may also change the way I write. I struggle to figure out how to integrate into my everyday experience - you may note that this is only my second post since launching last week.
For Peter, and perhaps others of his generation and new media community, new media has no affect on their work and learning for as Peter puts it, it is my ‘life’. It is already an integrated part of his everyday life.
My second point is what I find most remarkable about Peter’s comment. Not only is new media his life, it also appears as though his work and learning are synonymous with his life. Peter answers a question about his work and learning with a statement about his life – it like work, learning, and living are all somehow part of the same activity.
Social researchers claim that the division of labor - including the division between work and everyday life, reflects social purposes as well as social relationships. Work activity itself is recognized as perhaps the most significant mechanism for the socialization of adults. Indeed, throughout history the organization of production has explained how people and groups come together, form bonds, pursue common goals, and learn and develop as individuals and as a culture.
Barley & Kunda (2001) in an excellent essay on the need for more research on the changing nature of work, observe that in pre-modern, agrarian society people were socialized into a communal division of labor. The concept of work was unremarkable for it was an integrated and natural function of communal life. As the industrial revolution took hold, people left their small communities and took on jobs and began to separate their work - physically, temporally, socially, intellectually, and emotionally from other spheres of life. Industrial or economic modes of production became the dominate mode for organizing human production and as a consequence, class positions and work roles became the dominate mechanisms for adult socialization.
However we all know what has happened to the industrial 'job'! Let's just say it is not your father's job anymore! We are all well aware of the new formats for organizing production - indeed networks and other more fluid organizational formats are not that new anymore.
Salling Olsen (2001) claims these more fluid organizational formats and the new productive relationships they generate, have broken down the structures that once separated work from everyday life. Work requires much more individual responsibility for the development of skills, careers, and identities - individuals are called upon to become active agents in creating the circumstances of their own socialization.
And this is where Peter's comment and my research intersect. The focus of my research is on work and learning and the apparent break down of the boundaries between the two once distinct activities in industrial society. One was educated, prepared for work, and then entered into a career track that guided or even helped to pull them along - up the ladder - to more knowledge, expertise, and for some, prestige. Workplace learning (my field) was organized to help individuals learn the new knowledge and skill required to progress up these pre-existing career ladders.
But now, many of the traditional career ladders have broken down, and where they remain, many people are thwarted in upward progression by steep learning curves, as well as industrial restructuring or other forms of economic disruption. This is all having a huge affect on the social institution of school and on people like me who have spent their careers working to support learning in the workplace. We must rethink conventional notions about the relationship between work and learning as well as our understanding of how individuals are socialized in society in the new structures that are emerging for organizing production today.
Is work once again becoming ubiquitous in society? Some argue that work and by extension, careers are now boundaryless with people taking on up to seven distinctly different roles in production over their lifetime. Is this your experience - or do you experience a sense of coherence in the numerous work roles you may have taken on in your career?
My thanks once again to Peter for providing the grist for the mill.\
Monday, February 9, 2009
Launch
When I began my outreach into the new media community in Greater Washington, DC in May, 2007 many of you encouraged me to blog. I have resisted. In academia you publish at the end of the research process, not along the way. Personally the notion of ‘my blog’ reminded me of my nagging fear that no one really cares about what I have to say.
But I learned from many of you who participated in my study that blogging is a generative exercise where people can learn and grow together through writing. I also learned about how I can use a blog in my research – and this learning is about to change the way I work and learn. For example....
· Blogs are a good, informal way to learn about the themes I may find in my analysis because I can invite others to respond and contribute to my thinking before I put my ideas out into the world in a more authoritative style - like I must do in my final dissertation report.
· Indeed with a blog I can ‘push the learning’ – or- ‘bootstrap’ my analysis because blogging can improve my knowledge and writing. The more I blog/write, the more the quality of my thinking and writing will improve, and as my quality improves, more people may engage, thus ‘pushing the learning’ for us all. As people share their insights, it is likely they will influence my thinking and analysis – and I will learn.
· I can write in takes – do a little analysis, share it, see what comes up. The story of my research can accrete over time and I don’t have come up with everything at once.
· Indeed this way of writing and presenting is more responsive to the way people view and use information today. Information is ephemeral – the world will move on long before I can publish my findings. If I share it a little at a time, others might actually find it useful – now!
· I can use the blog to connect and remain connected with those who expressed interest in my study. Those who asked me to blog, in effect invited me to join in the new media community, not just remain on the outside and study it.
· But blogs are more than a connection; for blogs can also help people learn about their community and mobilize others around issues they care about. For some, blogs are a way of relating to others and making an impact in the world. I hope this will also be so for me.
In February, 2008 after spending many months participating in the new media community in DC, I returned home with buckets of data. I had notes and pictures from the dozens of meet-ups and un-events I attended, transcripts from dozens of interviews with people who were said to have a broad view of the media in DC, as well as transcripts from my in-depth interviews with 15 people in traditional and new media about their work and learning experiences.
I spent the last year developing case studies of each of the 15 individual participants. I used the interview transcripts and all my other data to construct a narrative or a series of stories each individual could tell of their work and learning experience. These are very extensive documents that provide a lens onto the broad knowledge, deep skill, and innovative practices these very talented individuals draw upon to create traditional and new media in DC. These cases also tell a very compelling story about the broader context of media in DC – the tools, the values, the community, the economics, etc – that make their unique ways of work and learning possible.
Now I am faced with the daunting task of pulling from all these cases to tell a plausible story of work and learning in new media in DC. What makes this task particularly challenging is my aim to preserve the incredible richness of each of the individual narratives while also telling the very compelling story I discovered about work and learning in new media in DC.
So my resistance to blogging has given way to the developmental demands of the final stage of my research. I invite you to engage with me in making sense of it all. It is my hope that you will not only find what I post here interesting, but that you also find something of practical valuable.
Before I end this first post, let me clarify my focus in this blog.
This blog is not about new media theory, practices, and trends. There are plenty of blogs and resources focused on interesting developments and perspectives on the media.
This blog is about the way new media is changing, or not changing the way people work and learn. In this blog, I plan to continue to explore the affect new media tools, practices, norms, values, and relationships is having on how people perceive and experience their work and how they learn in and from the work they do.
That said, what affect has new media had on your work and learning?
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