To begin to understand something as complex as the American Revolution, seeing the main players and events in different contexts is key. One needs to study how Adams and Jefferson honed their ideas, how Washington dealt with the Redcoat strategies, and what Revere did to make sure the Minutemen answered the call of April 19, 1775.
The boy in the illustration above can link together explanations of each of these aspects — in fact of just about any of hundreds of facts, outcomes, opinions, and people who interacted to bring about the Shot Heard Around the World.
A core aspect — if not THE core aspect — of 21st century education is this new phenomenon: network dynamics allow a learner to interact with the internet dynamically, mirroring what is needed to grasp related ideas into the learners own networking thought in his or her mind.
Schooling used to be to bring teachers and books that had knowledge to a place, then bring students to that place to acquire the knowledge made available by the teachers and books. It is now a simple matter for a student to connect directly and individually with everything known by humankind. That is terrific. But uber-terrific is that the network where the student interacts with the knowledge being learned is dynamic, emerging patterns of ideas that the student’s mind can reflect, manipulate, and learn.
This animation shows you everything that a network is and everything it can do. It is made up of just two kinds of things: nodes and links. Everything a network does emerges from the patterns made by the linking of the nodes.
Not until the end of the 20th century was it realized that networks are not just regular (like fishnets) or random (with no rhyme or reason). Networks, it is now known can express any conceivable reason or rhyme.
Come to think of it, living brains are the same way: they are networks. The internet is the first network medium into which we have been able to place all our human reasons and rhymes. A book is linear — though it can get your brain to network ideas as you read it.
The rhymes and reasons — math, sciences, humanities and the rest — that are used in education should be used by teachers and students from the new networked medium. You have probably noticed that in the animation above, you can think of the nodes as individual people. Social networking emerges patterns of people. Education should be reconfigured around making sure a person who is a learning node can link to a node in the online pattern of what she is studying.
Crows.net is a nifty learnode in the commons that engenders cooperative research on the language and culture of the American crow. It is the first of an ongoing Handschooling.com stream of excellent learnodes from the global knowledge commons that will be appearing regularly on this blog. The plan is to have these periodic delights from commons learning stuff give readers a break from the travails of educational transition.
The working hypothesis for the Crows.net Project is that the American crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos, is a highly intelligent species, with fully developed language and culture.
While there are few ornithologists actively studying the American crow and the existing scientific literature is not extensive, there are thousands of “crow fanciers” who are continually observing the language and behavior of various populations of these birds in a wide variety of habitats throughout their entire range.
This being the case, it is postulated that by organizing the existing knowledge about crows from all sources, and coordinating the efforts of “crow fanciers” and professional scientists, that sufficient information can be obtained to gain some understanding of, and initiate real – if limited – communication with a non-human, intelligent species, the American crow.
Crows.net contains a rich variety of insights and information. It also links out to key crow authorities and enthusiasts. This little crow network intertwingles to the benefit of one of the bird world’s most fascinating characters and feathered friends. You can even take a listen to their variety of caws.
Why future education is emerging around handschooling
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Soon every student will be connecting directly with the global knowledge commons. Schooling has to be reconfigured around this fundamental change.
The strong echo continues in schools and across the world of what Jonathan Kozol indelibly named savage inequalities. The mobile window opens a global commons that is the same for each and oblivious to who is visiting it to learn.
