Epiphanies with Gardner Campbell

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Becca

What a pleasure to meet Gardner Campell and hear his epiphanies about learning through the  open web. 

Campbell introduced me to the idea of knowledge emotions–what you feel as you’re learning–and Paula Silvia’s (UNC Greensboro) work on the intersections of confusion and interest (e.g., Silvia 2010). Confusion is a normal part of learning, and we can look at it, query it, find out how it’s related to our learning, comparing it across different contexts. Resolving that confusion is a form of creating knowledge. 

I’ve been thinking of the idea of creating knowledge a lot recently. I used to think it took great hubris to create knowledge–or to claim that you created something. I thought it on par with Newton’s recognition of gravity, a big discovery. The idea that our students could create knowledge seemed bizarre, and it didn’t even occur to me that it was possible to ask students to create knowledge until I started my faculty position. Create? Yes, but the creation that I was thinking of was more aligned to taking pre-existing knowledge and putting it into next contexts. 

Actually, creating knowledge is part of everyday humaning. Putting old knowledge into new context is a form of creating knowledge. Campbell spent quite a bit of time with students working on Wikipedia entries. What he found is that, with thinking about a community of Wikipedians as an audience, along with global readers, students became more invested in both researching and synthesizing that research as they wrote. Even finding an article to write is a form of new knowledge–critiquing Wikipedia to find the gaps, to find and address what is underrepresented. 

In a world with generative AI, what does creating knowledge mean? Can gen AI conduct this synthesis that students are doing? I don’t think so. Gen AI doesn’t create knowledge, it repeats from what is already there. It can’t make new discoveries. 

The onset of generative AI necessitates teaching our students how to make discoveries, how to create knowledge. Let’s connect and support each other as we discover how to support our students in the process of discovery. 

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Sarita

“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to a new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.” Flavia Weedn

Gardner shared so much wisdom from his teaching-learning experiences that it made my soul want to dance. I truly appreciated when Gardner situated us educators as professional learners – I think that this is such an apt way to describe how as educators we can situate ourselves in teaching-learning spaces. This is important as teaching and learning technologies evolve and are ever-changing, sharing our own vulnerability with newer technologies and tools while also our willingness to learn prepares the ground for thoughtful engagement with students. Students get to see our learner side as we try to make sense of all that is happening.

What I also learned from Gardner was Paul Silvia’s work on “knowledge emotions” and that being genuinely confused and being able to articulate that confusion is a pathway to learning. Being able to document that confusion, think about the process, what happened, how I went about learning, what roadblocks I came across, how did I work through that challenge, what resources I used, which resources were helpful and why, which questions do I still have – make the learning process palpable. This is antithetical to getting answers quickly by using generative AI.  Human learning takes time and process matters. The story of our learning is where the real stuff happens. Making the connections from these experiences is where insight is generated and reflection on these insights leads to additional insights.

The one question that Gardner put forth so eloquently is the one that I keep asking myself constantly “Am I deepening and broadening capacity for student interest?” To do this requires for us as educators to work in ways that prevent our students from seeing school learning and the product of that learning as isolated instances. Student generated work is not for the teacher’s eyes only. Gardner shared his experiences with students when they wrote for Wikipedia.  

I really appreciated when Gardner articulated that learning is not in conflict with creating – for creating knowledge requires that we know something. So how are we increasing our own capacity and our student’s capacity for sense-making to enter professional and non-professional communities with ingenuity and their own brilliance rather than the canned, non-creative ones from ChatGPT?

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Todd

I remember going to MIT for the Connected Learning conference in 2018 with Sarita and Jane and meeting Gardner in the real world. We sat on the floor, outside of where people were having lunch and talked about music and books. Wow. Nothing like meeting someone you look up to and having an easy discussion with them like they were an old friend.

 It is interesting how the web can do that. Not that we were “friends” by any means, but we had bumped into each other over the years on Twitter and maybe some other spaces. Maybe I commented on his blog, or he on mine? I did read a lot of what he was wondering about and watched the infamous Bags of Gold talk. But to sit out on a patio and have a conversation about rock and roll. That is living. I am lucky.

Below is an interesting adaptation by #ds106 great Mariana Funes using some of the text from the Baylor University “No Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences” talk.

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More recently Gardner and I have been playing golf. And while we have talked about the challenges we face in academia, we usually talk about the challenges of a particular hole, the wonderful scenery on the course, or an upcoming vacation or our health. It is comforting. It is like that teacher who talks the time to ask about your day or share a silly story with you. The one who takes the time to spend time with you. That is the part of school where I want to live.

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