Reposted from The Fisher’s Net AnchorDesk: http://www.fishersnet.net/cyberzine/PlayToLearn.html

Play to Learn

Richard Nysse
Professor of Old Testament
Luther Seminary

Play to learn.

No, this is not a suggestion for a kindergarten curriculum. Playing around on the World Wide Web is an excellent place to begin your preparation for Web-based teaching and learning.

The Web has been trumpeted as revolutionary in education. Learning any place, any time with digital interconnectivity is seen in some quarters as having an impact equivalent to the invention of the printing press; the place-bound classroom is being eclipsed.

Others, however, point to disappointing results from the many technologies this century has offered for revolutionary educational change (radio, TV, audio tapes, etc.); the traditional classroom, they say, is unmatched for quality.

Teachers that face, whether by choice or necessity, the need to prepare a course for the Web cannot begin by arbitrating between these competing assessments of the Web. Playful exploration should come first.

Why play? Because play allows for an open-ended exploration of the environment. What does the Web do to you? How does it work for you? What captures and holds your interest? What seems like trickery and smells-and-bells, lacking sufficient substance to lead you to return? These questions are about your experience and your answers create a sense of how the environment can work as a learning environment.

But haven’t all kinds of environments been tinkered with before with little success? Holding class around a picnic table on a sunny spring day seldom seems to work, but why? Usually because the modality of the classroom has been retained with little thought given to the effect of the environment.

Similarly, it is a bad idea to speak of "placing a class on the web."

Learning in a classroom and learning in a web environment are not the same. Note that the previous sentence says nothing about which is a better learning environment. A class on Genesis in a seminary degree program differs from a class on the same topic in a congregational setting. The contrast surely does not center in the intellectual ability of the participants and both may use a similarly constructed room. But the environments are different: in seminary degree program the teacher has the power of the grade and the learners are interested in obtaining a formal credential. Learning works differently when the environment is changed.

If a teacher assumes the Web is largely a concession to access difficulties faced by students, she or he is likely to replicate the traditional classroom as fully as possible. This may be convenient for the teacher, but the resulting learning outcome will be less than that of a traditional classroom.

To push this issue a bit further, if the teacher begins with the question of how to teach in a Web environment, technology becomes the challenge. If the teacher begins with the question of how students can and do learn in a Web environment, pedagogical issues come to the fore and technological implementation recedes. The teacher’s instincts shaped by past experience are then of prime value.

Part of the "past" experience of the teacher should be recent personal learning in a Web environment. This is where "play" is important. Do you like art? Then tour the museums that are on the Web. Do you like golf? Then surf the many sites that feature golf results and instruction. Do you like books? Then read the reviews posted by other readers at Amazon.com. Let your curiosity lead you around. Play!

When you have sorted out what has captured your interest (i.e., what helped you learn), get a few friends to do the same so that you can examine the environment from the angle of learning styles other than your own. Play with others, in other words.

When you have learned the environment by using it, you then can begin to ask what exchanges between student and teacher, between students and textbooks, and between students can be carried out in a Web environment. What can be done through a Web environment that cannot be as easily done or cannot be done at all in a classroom? What possibilities are opened up? What exchanges in a classroom environment cannot be replicated? What possibilities are closed down? The central issue is pedagogy, not technology.

I think more valid possibilities are opened than closed by a Web learning environment. I did not reach that conclusion through any theoretical study. Rather, I discovered the environment through play, starting with following the Tour de France, a bicycle race that draws as much attention per capita in Europe as the Super Bowl does in the US. From there it was Web sites in Russia, Kentucky, Minneapolis, Tokyo-the world began to shrink and the possibilities for human connection began to expand. Access without the barrier of geography became a reality. I was still playing, but what I was learning was invaluable. I learned a new environment for learning.

I still depend on others for the technology. Occasionally, the learning curve for a new program is something I must climb, but it is purely a means to an end. The technology holds little fascination, but learning how this new learning environment works best is utterly fascinating. I continue to learn its possibilities by playing within it.

Reposted from The Fisher’s Net AnchorDesk: http://www.fishersnet.net/cyberzine/PlayToLearn.html