XplanaZine

It’s the end of Band Camp and my kids have invited me to their end-of-week demonstration for the parents. I’m lucky enough to have two kids in the band so I figure, at the very least, I’ll be eligible for two free meal tickets at the get together.

I get to the band hall and the first thing I discover is that this is really a fundraiser disguised as a show for the parents. Heck, I can’t even get through the doors without registering for the Band Booster group and agreeing to buy t-shirts. And, just in case I do sneak by them, they have signup forms on the tables where we’re eating. These are stapled to the event schedules for the year. And, by the way, if you haven’t been through this before, this may be your only chance to get a schedule. I take three.

After I make it past the Booster group, I head to the chow hall. After all, I came to see my kids play and to eat. So I grab my hot dog and chips and find a table. I figure it makes sense to sit in the back. Less chance of getting volunteered for something. Well, in about five minutes a couple of other parents sit down and start making small talk. And while they engage in typical Oklahoman banter, I start looking around the room and taking in the sights.

The kids are all in here scarfing down their food before they have to head off to get ready for the demonstration. I find my son and see that he’s sitting with all the kids in his trumpet section. And then I look around and see my daughter sitting with all the girls in the color guard section. In fact, as I check out the entire room, I see that all of the band sections are sitting together. They all look happy and considerably geeky.

It’s about that time that I look up and take inventory of the group I’m sitting with. Now, as an aside for those of you who aren’t band parents, there is an eery reality that the offspring in these groups tend to look pretty much like their begatters. So I look around my table and see that I’m sitting with a group of geeky looking adults who were most assuredly band kids in an earlier life.

Well, my feeling is that all geeks are really related so, while I have no official band blood, all my computer nerdiness should count for quite a bit. In the end, I find I fit in with this awkward crowd and even find myself wishing I had played the marimba instead of shortstop in high school.

Now all of this got me thinking about the natural selections of groups in education. No one made any of these kids or parents sit where they did. No one made them choose the instrument they play. And no one made me sit with these other parents. Through a variety of decisions and choices we all ended up with self-selecting communities. It happened naturally and with little real thought.

This is what we human beings do. We socialize. We get into groups of people who, at some level, seem to resemble us. We do it consistently. We do it naturally.

That’s why I’m a big advocate of tools like blogs and wikis that provide online, natural expressions of this self-organization process for learning. After twenty-five years of teaching, I am well aware that it doesn’t matter how much I try to prevent community-building in my classes — students will find a way to self organize with or without my help. Looking back, I can see that I’ve taught entire courses where there were huge analog or digital backchannels of which I was shamefully unaware. Somehow I thought I was the center of the show and that, by fiat, I could stand in the middle of a course and control all information and social connections.

Of course, we all know how silly that is, because groups of people form and reform spontaneously, driven by natural forces much more powerful that a single teacher’s vision.

Again, that’s why technologies that support learners’ tendencies towards self organization are so important. Blogs and wikis allow users to create their own clusters (joining and unjoining) whether those clusters make any sense to me or not, and whether I think those are the ideal clusters for learning or not. As these groups or clusters form spontaneously, their communication and the information they share become an important part of the learning environment.

Of course, if we’re smart, we’ll realize that this happens with or without our permission, and we’ll actually embrace the energy and learning potential inherent the phenomenon.

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