Techlearning blog

The June 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine includes a wonderful article titled "Linnaeus: The Name Giver," relating details about the life and work of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. Linnaeus is one of the originators of the familiar scientific taxonomy studied by scientists and scientific learners around our globe. According to the article:

Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus was an early information architect. He believed that every kind of plant and animal on Earth should be named and classified.

Taxonomic learning in some ways defines a traditional paradigm, or pattern of thinking, about education and learning. According to this view, everything has an ordered place and name, which is centrally agreed upon by a relatively small number of academic or scientific elites. Unfortunately in many schools, rather than encourage students to develop their own capacities for inquiry and scientific exploration, some teachers present science as essentially a gigantic taxonomy which must be memorized and accurately regurgitated at test time. Certainly it is important to learn the foundational facts of a given discipline-- it is impossible to invent or improvise as a jazz musician, for example, if a person does not have a firm grasp of fundamental chords, rhythms, melodies and harmonies. Similarly for a scientist or an engineer, it is extremely difficult to invent, discover, or explore new frontiers without a firm grounding in the basics. It is unfortunate when students obtain an incomplete perspective of learning, whether in the context of science, music, or another content area, which perceives that learning and "doing" the activities of that discipline essentially consists of memorizing the completed works of others. When you listen to scientists on the cutting edge of their field, on a podcast from a source like Science Friday or Science at NASA, listeners can get an acute sense of the multitude of both unanswered and even unasked questions which scientists continue to face and search for today.

In traditional learning contexts, taxonomies are usually well defined. In today's information landscape, however, folksonomies are emerging organically which help organize ideas to an extent. Tag clouds like those of popular del.icio.us social bookmark tags or popular Flickr image tags are examples. The video "The Machine is Us/ing Us" from the Digital Ethnography project at Kansas State University (also available on YouTube) provides a compelling illustration of how these organizational folksonomies are emerging on the web. In educational contexts, images and blog posts related to different educational conferences (like NECC 2007) on the HitchHikr website are other examples of "folks" organizing their ideas and thoughts with tags which can be aggregated and organized in different ways.

As I read and contribute to these emerging folksonomies of information, I am struck by the non-linear nature of these conversations. In most formal, educational classes, information is presented in a carefully structured and organized way, reminiscent of Linnaeus' taxonomies. Learners are exposed to basic ideas, and gradually gain exposure to increasingly complex and often challenging material as well as problems. Learning in the folksonomy-contexts of web 2.0 is quite different. While tools like Technorati and Yahoo Pipes are certainly useful in empowering people to create their own, custom funnels of tagged information, the ideas which are the "output" of these tools are a far cry from the neatly organized, structured and hierarchical categories of Carl Linnaeus and his scientific progeny.

"Traditional" learning environments were and still are, of course, far from the ideal which might be envisioned by a taxonomic learning architect. Each student enters a given class with a different set of experiences and a different amount of prior knowledge about the subject. (Different schema.) Even though teachers and professors attempt to structure learning experiences so students possess the background knowledge they need to fully understand and be able to apply new material, that goal is rarely attained for all learners because of their diversity of prior schema. People learn at different rates and in different ways, and strictly speaking, authentic "learning conversations" in most classrooms are probably rarely LINEAR.

Thinking itself, at least for me, seems to rarely be a linear experience. Instead, thinking is more often similar to hyperlinking. One thought leads to another, and the connection of ideas rarely seems to follow a straight path which could have been predicted with complete accuracy in advance.

Living as we do in our flat world of folksonomies and powerful read/write web technologies, are we ready to say goodbye to linear conversations? Perhaps some people are, but I do not think I am. I still LOVE books, and I even aspire to write some myself one day. I've been asked, "Why would you want to write a book, when you're able to communicate with a wide audience already via blogs?" My answer comes down to issues of taxonomies, linear learning, and schema. I like how books still present information and ideas in a linear format. Yes, certainly book readers can skip around, and some people (including my own father) are notorious for skipping to the end of novels and reading the ending first! Perhaps it is because I was "schooled" in the 20th century and have still lived most of my life in the 20th century, that I still favor the linear presentation style of a traditional, paper-based book? I'm not sure.

I enjoy and am amazed by the non-linear conversations of the blogosophere and our web 2.0 world, but I'm not ready to say farewell to linear conversations and linear presentation styles just yet.