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Formation of community: wHAT CAN VLOGBROTHERS TEACH US?

4/30/2016

I often find that some of the most exciting discoveries that we make, especially in the world of the internet, can be a totally wonderful accident, and that is certainly how I came across my most recent passion, the VlogBrothers. On the face of it the VlogBrothers are little more than a successful Youtube channel that have little to teach the Lifewide Education community, however, I think the VlogBrothers can provide us with some useful insights as to the nature of active onlie communities and how they form!

Some background to begin with. VlogBrothers is a youtube channel run by Hank and John Green, two 30 something year olds living in the American midwest. On wikipedia John is listed as the author responsible for best selling books such as The Fault in Our Stars, while Hank is described as a musician, educator and blogger. The two of them have, outside of the VlogBrothers each had significant successes, and yet this is not what I want to focus on.

Their headline channel, the VlogBrothers started in 2007 and is based on the very simple premise of two brothers communicating to one another via the medium of video blogs about things they find interesting. Topics range from books they are reading to their most recent projects, to their views on current social and political issues as well as simply interesting questions that come to mind. In short, in the last 9 years almost every topic you can think of has been covered in some way.

To date the channel has 2.8 million subscribers and 600 million views, these figures alone make for impressive reading, giving an insight into the power of the channel, and yet this is still not evidence of any kind of community, for instance there are channels dedicated to head massages that have similar counts. So what is it that makes this channel note worthy
as a vehicle for community?

This brings me to the crux of the point, ‘Nerdfighteria’. Nerdfighteria is the name given to the community that has sprung up around the VlogBrothers channel, the brothers describe it as “a community that sprung up around our videos that get together and fight against world suck”. The group have been responsible for arranging projects such as loaning over $4 million to entrepreneurs in devleopling countries, have raised over $4 million that have gone towards charities such as UNICEF, Autism speaks, Planned Parenthood, Water.org and many many more, as well as recently raising money for the refugee crisis in Syria.

However, the community element of Nerdfighteria goes further than simply raising money, and for me this is where the interest lies. The group has formal sub groups at a number of American universities, as well as incredibly active message boards and websites which are responsible for marshalling individuals and bringing them to action, be that researching a new fascinating tidbit of history, producing videos to participate in the conversation the brothers are having, or even getting involved with supporting AFC Wimbledon (a long, albeit quite interesting story that I won’t go into here).

In short, here is an online community responsible for raising millions of pounds for charity, becoming politically engaged, and actively participating in a wide ranging conversation. The group have been reported on by websites such as The Wall Street Journal, and have an active base estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. So, how did all of this stem from two brothers making video blogs?

For me, there are two things consistent across all of their videos, firstly that while the topics are incredibly varied, they very often try to contain a message of sorts. The brothers are very good at taking stories from their everyday life and reflecting on it, analysing it, in a very relatable way. This gives their viewers the opportunity to learn from them by taking these lessons and applying them in their own lives. While the content of all our lives may not be the same, many of the lessons they tell transcend issues such as age, race and gender and focus on the shared, complex experience of living.

Secondly, the sheer unadulterated enthusiasm of the brothers is infectious. Through the success of VlogBrothers they have gone on to create additional educational channels looking at everything from ‘Big History’ to ‘Organic Chemistry’ with almost everything in between. They have a passion for learning, sharing their learning and engaging people, and this comes across quite clearly in all of their videos. It is clear that a cult of personality has sprung up around the brothers that in itself inspires a degree of devotion, and I am certain is responsible, at least to some extent, for helping to create such an active and engaged community.

The brothers themselves are keen to grow the community spirit, holding projects to engage and not simply inform people. For me this is an example of YouTube being used to encourage two way communication, not simply a top down information presentation service which is often the death of online communities!

You could argue, with merit, that the VlogBrothers inspired Nerdfighters are not the only online community out there, what are Tumblr and Reddit if not online communities? I feel what marks Nerdfighteria out as different is their devotion to courses outside of issues that are directly related to them. This is a case of a self organised group inspired to make real world changes led by two guys chatting on video blogs! To me that is remarkable, as anyone who has tried to keep an online community alive knows, maintaining wide scale engagement when there isn’t any obvious, direct personal benefit can be a challenge, and yet here it is being done and continuing to grow.

VlogBrothers are an important part of my lifewide learning. I have learned all sorts of things from them but they have given me three valuable lessons about inspiring people to form an active online community:
-Be passionate & committed to what you are doing
-Be relatable to other people
-Be willing to share what you know and accepting of what others are willing to share
If we meet these criteria then maybe, just maybe, we can help create an actively engaged online community!

Michael Tomlinson is a postgraduate medical student and a member of the Lifewide Education team

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what is The educational value of an ecological perspective?

4/9/2016

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Our learning, development and achievement constitute the most important ongoing project in our life. They are continuous (lifelong), diverse in their forms and pervasive in the multiplicity of everyday contexts and situations we inhabit (lifewide). Its the everyday lifewide dimension of our life that we engage with, while the lifelong dimension provides the memories of experiences that we can draw upon and make sense of our life.

In adult life, beyond formal education, our learning, development and achievement emerge from the circumstances of our lives often in an unpredictable and unplanned way. Over the last few years I have become deeply interested in the way in which we inhabit and interact with the world and the way our learning, development and achievement emerges through these interactions. I have come to see this process as ecological in nature and I have become so attached to the idea that I spent six months working on a book called 'Exploring Learning Ecologies'(1) and I now need to gain feedback on whether the way I have come to see an ecology for learning, developing and achieving has value to people who are involved in helping people learn.

Ecosystems & ecologies
In the natural world, every organism inhabits an ecosystem which comprises the complex set of relationships and interactions among the resources, energies, habitats, and residents of an area for the purpose of living. Each organism within an ecosystem has its own ecology within the ecosystem interacting in its own unique way with its environment and the other inhabitants, seeking and using particular resources and forming particular relationships with the materials and events in its world.

Human beings are no different. We inhabit our own ecological (ecosocial) system which comprises the set of relationships and interactions among the people, resources, energies, habitats, and other residents of the particular environments we inhabit for the purpose of living. Where we are different to all other organisims on this planet is in our ability to learn and develop through this learning and to pass on this learning to other members of our species. Learning is therefore one of the most important dimensions of our ecology for sustaining and enhancing our life and the concept of a learning ecology provides us with the means to visualise the dynamics of complex self-determined and self-organised learning process and appreciate how the different elements of the ecology - contexts, process, will and agency, relationships and resources, fit together in a particular set of circumstances.

The concept of a learning ecology provides a more comprehensive and holistic perspective on learning, development and achievement than is normally considered in higher education. The value of an ecological perspective is that it encourages us to see our learning and development as a process that connects us in a holistic and profound way to other people, to the material resources in our environment and the events and circumstances of our lives, and to the things we want or need to do and achieve.

The proposition I'm developing is that an individual's self-created learning ecologies grow from the circumstances (contexts and affordances) of their life and they are established for a purpose that is directed to accomplishing short term (proximal) goals connected to more distant (distal) goals or life purposes. Their learning ecologies include their processes, activities and practises, their relationships and networks, and the tools and technologies they use, and they provide them with the opportunities, experiences, information, knowledge and other resources for learning, developing and achieving something that they value (Figure 1 & 2).

Figure 1 Components of a learning ecology (1)

Our learning ecologies are the means by which we connect and integrate our past and current experiences and learning. They embrace all the physical and virtual places and spaces we inhabit and the learning and the meaning we gain from the contexts and situations that constitute our lives. Our learning ecologies are the product of both imagination and reason and they are the vehicle for our creative thoughts and actions. They are one of our most important sites for creativity and they enable us to develop ourselves personally and professionally in all aspects of our lives.

The perpetual challenge of development
The perpetual challenge facing all human beings is fundamentally adevelopmental challenge focused on problems like 'learning to deal with and make the most of the situations, resources and opportunities in our lives' and 'solving the problems and challenges we encounter day to day'. There is also a developmental challenge emanating from within, 'how can I be and become a better human being.' These two forces, one intrinsic the other extrinsic drive our motivations which lead to us creating ecologies for learning, developing and achieving. These forces involve us in the continual process of becoming different which invariably means learning new things by adding to existing knowledge or skill, or replacing something which we already have. In this way development is integral to our daily project of perpetually becoming.

Figure 2 Simple conceptual tool for evaluating the components of an ecology for learning and development (1)

Example of an ecology for learning, developing and achieving
Our ecologies for learning, developing and achieving are revealed in the narratives we tell about our significant learning and development projects and events. Our projects come in all shapes and sizes, and in all contexts. We might illustrate the idea of an ecology for personal development through the scenario of learning to drive a car (Figure 3) an important learning project for most young adults. The scenario involves the learner in a comprehensive and mainly informal way interacting physically and emotionally with his environment in order to develop the knowledge, awareness and practical skills to drive competently and safely.

The process begins when the learner decides they want to learn to drive(motivation/will) and take the test to demonstrate proficiency (proximal goal). Consciously or unconsciously their desire to drive will be embedded in the idea of a better and more productive life (distal goal). The individual has created a need and they must perceive and find the affordances available to them in their environment in order to meet this need. The individual, often with parental guidance and support, creates processdrawing on the affordances in their existing ecosocial system, to learn and develop themselves in line with their objective. The ecosystem they create includes context, resources, relationships and an unfolding (emergent) process over a significant period of time.

Figure 3 Personal learning ecology created in order to learn to drive a car and pass the driving test. Includes my context, affordances and process for learning to drive, the contexts in which I learn to drive, and a set of relationships and resources that enable me to learn.

Typically, the process involves:

several months of dedicated activity reading, practising, discussing, observing,
access to a car so they can practise
access to information about driving and the rules of the road - either as a book/booklet, DVD or on-line resources
a range of driving instructors including a trained professional instructor and untrained family members and friends

physical environment - safe areas for practising - like empty car parks and quiet roads - then public highways with various traffic conditions

This example of an ecology for learning shows the learner seeing and using the affordances they have to learn to drive in their particular context - their social, physical and virtual environment. They formulate a specific goals - to learn to drive and pass the test to become a qualified driver. Their self-determined learning process may well be aided by a professional instructor but the learner also draws on resources available for learning in their own environment - the knowledge and experience of people they know (relationships) - family and friends. As they practise driving they are immersing themselves in situations that are relevant to their learning and developing their own case examples of situations they encounter on different sorts of roads in different sorts of driving conditions. The experience is rich in emotion (I experienced some today as I accompanied my daughter who is learning!!) which helps anchor their learning in memorable moments and incidents. Over time experience is accumulated in a range of contexts - road, traffic, day time/night time and weather. As they participate in this process they can tap into the experiential knowledge (resources) of the people who accompany them on journeys as both drivers and passengers and their new awareness also encourages them to be more observant as a passenger so that they begin to think like a driver, reading and anticipating situations even when they are not driving. The conversations they have about their experiences will also encourage them to reflect and learn through this process. This ecology aimed at becoming a competent driver - may last several months and perhaps involve 10's or 100s hours of time and effort in which learning and its embodiment in their driving practise is the primary goal. If they are not successful in their test they will experience and feel failure and have to overcome this as well.

Through their learning ecology a person will gradually master a body of procedural and experiential knowledge and practical skill and embody this knowledge in their driving and eventually reach the standard to pass the test. Their learning, development and achievement have emerged from their interactions with their everyday environment and the circumstances of their life and the idea of a learning ecology embodies all these things.

What's the point?
The point of any idea is in its value. Does the idea convey meaning that is useful, that helps us understand, appreciate or explain something - in this case the idea is offered as an explanation of how we learn. If it does can we use the idea to help us design/create better educational practices and help learners become more effective in working with the complexities in their lives. In developing an idea like a learning ecology I'm trying to give the ecological metaphor new meanings that are relevant to learning, education and personal development. But its one thing to persuade myself that an idea has meaning and quite another to persuade other people. Its my belief that the idea of a learning ecology holds different value for different audiences.

Firstly does it hold conceptual value? Does it help us as visualise the dynamics of a complex self-determined and self-organised learning process and appreciate how the different elements of this process fit together to achieve a goal. Does it provide a framework for helping us think and act in a more relational and connected way - an ecological way of thinking perhaps.

What is its value for learners? Does the concept encourage us to see learning as a process and appreciate the ways in which we create processes that utilise and develop the relationships and resources we need in order to do what we have to do in order to accomplish the things we need to do?.

What is the value for teachers? Does the concept open up new possibilities for contexts, relationships and interactions as we appreciate that the learning ecologies of learners' extend beyond the ecology we have created for their learning and development? Does it encourage us to design educational challenges in ways that encourage learners to develop their own ecologies for learning?

What is the value for universities? Does the idea conflict with the ways we approach teaching, learning and the provision of educational resources and opportunities or does it open new possibilities for our imaginations and activities that we can utilise to enable us to become more involved in the ecologies of learning, knowledge development and creativity?

Invitation
I welcome feedback on the ideas I have set out in my book Exploring Learning Ecologies and the educational value in these ideas. You can email me at normanjjackson@btinternet.com All proceeds from the book are used to support Lifewide Education.

Sources
1) Jackson N J (2016) Exploring Learning Ecologies Chalk Mountain https://www.lulu.com/
2) Lifewide Magazine. Several issues on learning ecologies. Free to download at http://www.lifewideeducation.uk/magazine.html

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Formation of community: wHAT CAN VLOGBROTHERS TEACH US?

what is The educational value of an ecological perspective?

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