Connecting The Dots - May 2010

This post is an effort to give some synthesis about the material discovered, gathered, commented on and shared this May 2010 - to connect a few dots and extract an apparent theme arising across voices and disciplines... 

Let us start with Jane McGonigal’s view that gamers are virtuosos in four areas: Urgent Optimism, Social Fabric, Blissful Productivity & Epic Meaning and link to Dan Pink’s argument that businesses would be more successful through intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery and purpose. 

Sign me up for any class syllabus that offers urgent optimism, social fabric, blissful productivity and epic meaning. The environment, the learning journey itself, encounters conditions that are intrinsically meaningful and provide competency, purpose and relevancy opportunity.

McGonial (environmental breadth – access to broader human yearnings, aspirations, imaginations) and Pink (environmental depth – access to intrinsic value).  

The environment itself and objects in the environment (gamer, business, education) must connect to a person meaningfully and intrinsically. 

There is a curious dichotomy between ‘autonomy’ and ‘epic meaning’, which suggests a need to provide enough environmental spaciousness to allow individualistic and altruistic inclinations to co-exist.   

Let us now consider Elliot Washor’s view that a central part of learning is letting students discover objects they “hold dear” and Sir Ken Robinson’s mining analogy: “Human resources are like natural resources, they are often buried deep, you have to go looking for them, not just laying around the surface, you have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.”

To dig a little further – learners do not always know what they ‘hold dear’ or are uncomfortable at being autonomous (absent from learning history?) or have a diminished sense of purpose with ‘epic meaning’. Guidance is necessary by teachers (backed by educational systems) who can build and navigate landscapes / conditions that nurture learner intrinsic-extrinsic exploration and experimentation. A sophisticated instructional skill-set. The breath to see the environment and the depth to look deeply. 

Picture / Creative Commons Licensed Work - http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitneywaller/4269947837/