Sharing spaces

When Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) began to take hold in teaching circles in the 1980s, personal computers were still largely stand-alone, and the World Wide Web was little more than a twinkle in Sir Tim's eyes. Vygotsky was educated in the Stalinist USSR so his ideas of cognitive gain were inevitably tinged with communal ideals, resulting in a theory rooted in social contruction of learning. But how could teachers translate these ideas into authentic learning contexts? A seminal conference paper entitled PC is to Piaget and WWW is to Vygotsky revealed a glimmer of light. The paper was quite prescient, but also wide of the mark, because it was written in 1995. That was of course the year many consider to have marked the emergence of the Web into the mainstream of our consciousness. Yet it wasn't until the social dimensions of the Web began to emerge into mainstream use around 6-7 years ago that Vygotsky's social constructivism approaches began to be realised.

Now we see learners collaborating, corresponding, voting, networking and connecting using a bewildering array of social tools such as wikis, blogs, social networking sites, photosharing and videosharing services and mobile telephony. It has to be documented, and all of us are the ones who will do it.

Below, as I promised in an earlier blog, is my own small contribution - the first in a series of 60 second videos which will illustrate how students are using the social web to create shared learning spaces. In this video you will see that they are not only sharing spaces, but also tools and technologies (a sort of technological multi-tasking) which provides them with their desired and possibly optimised learning spaces. Learning is the same as it ever was, but thanks to the new tools I believe it is also subtly changing.

Click to play