JSB by Joi Ito
I am one happy and excited guy! I get to meet John Seely Brown (JSB) in person at PLP Live 2012: Inspire. Collaborate. Shift on September 28th in Philadelphia!
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one to ask for autographs or drool at the feet of my heroes.
But, you see, JSB has been a key figure in my academic and educational life since the mid-eighties. He has gained a more popular presence in the last few years – particularly with his publication of the Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big things in Motion and more recently A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.
In Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning (1989), JSB (with Allan Collins & Paul Duguid) suggested that what students pick up “is a product of the ambient culture rather than of explicit teaching”. This paper caused me to think much more deeply about ‘instruction’ versus ‘construction’ – about setting the conditions for learning – about designing environments that were authentic, complex and rich rather than contrived, simplistic and reductionist.
It made me reflect deeply about kids before they get to school and how they manage to ‘steal that which they need to know’ from the larger gestalt of the complex worlds in which they lived. Later on, JSB & Paul Duguid wrote Stolen Knowledge (1996), which reinforced and supplemented my thinking about this. They started that paper with a quotation I particularly loved:
“A very great musician came and stayed in [our] house. He made one big mistake … [he] determined to teach me music, and consequently no learning took place. Nevertheless, I did casually pick up from him a certain amount of stolen knowledge. [Rabindrath Tagore quoted in Bandyopadhyay, 1989: 45]“
Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production in a Digital Age also resonates with my socio-constructionist heart and beliefs. Many of you know I am a fan of Seymour Papert’s deep thinking about tinkering and ‘hard fun’ and his creation of Logo and Lego Logo robotics. I wonder have John Seely Brown and Seymour shared thoughts and conversations in the past? I will be able to have these, and other, conversations with him at PLP Live 2012: Inspire. Collaborate. Shift.
THAT is why I am so excited.
Ok. He is also an avid motorcyclist and judging from my occasional emails with him, a heck of a personable guy!
Peter Skillen
Latest posts by Peter Skillen (see all)
- Project Based Learning (PBL): Am I Doing it Right? - February 14, 2019
- The Science of Passion Based Learning - April 9, 2013
- Scaffolding for Deep Understanding - November 30, 2012
