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To *teach* is to model and demonstrate, and to "learn* is to practice and reflect. To teach is, essentially, to provide or to make possible the having of experiences by students. These models and demonstrations, by virtue of their structural similarities with other models and demonstrations, allow students to form relevant networks of connections. Students then actively begin to learn by practicing - first by imitating, then later by creating something novel. The point of practize is to improve performance by receiving feedback. They then reflect on what they have experience and practiced - this is (somewhat) analagous to the Boltzmann mechanism.

Networks can be trusted, as James Surowiecki shows in The Wisdom of Crowds. "Many cognitive, coordination and cooperation problems are best solved by canvassing groups (the larger the better) of reasonably informed, unbiased, engaged people. The group's answer is almost invariably much better than any individual expert's answer, even better than the best answer of the experts in the group." It is this wisdom we see not only in the sudience picking the right answer in "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" but also in picking stocks in the stock market and picking governments in elections.

However, not just any network can be trusted. Networks can sometimes run away with themselves - for example, if one person in a community catches a fatal virus, it can spread to every other member, and kill the entire community. Such phenomena are known as cascade phenomena. In the realm of information networks (such as the brain, or a community) these are known as informational cascades. They are like 'jumping to a conclusion' or 'groupthink'.

Networks avoid informational cascades - and hence, are reliable - only if they satisfy the following four criteria (known collectively as 'the semantic condition'):

- Diversity - Did the process involve the widest possible spectrum of points of view? Did people who interpret the matter one way, and from one set of background assumptions, interact with people who approach the matter from a different perspective?

- Autonomy - Were the individual knowers contributing to the interaction of their own accord, according to their own knowledge, values and decisions, or were they acting at the behest of some external agency seeking to magnify a certain point of view through quantity rather than reason and reflection?

- Openness - Is there a mechanism that allows a given perspective to be entered into the system, to be heard and interacted with by others?

- Connectivity - Is the knowledge being produced the product of an interaction between the members, or is it a (mere) aggregation of the members' perspectives? A different type of knowledge is produced one way as opposed to the other. Just as the human mind does not determine what is seen in front of it by merely counting pixels, nor either does a process intended to create public knowledge.

6. Examples

How does the discussion above help us understand about and design learning technologies? They show us not only what to design but also help us understand what would be a better (or worse) design.

We begin with the principle, 'To *teach* is to model and demonstrate, and to "learn* is to practice and reflect.' This gives us a set of four types of things to create:

- Things that model - such as the wiki, concept maps, diagram tools such as gliffy, video / 2L 3D representation, and the like

- Things that demonstrate - such as code libraries, image samples, articles describing thought processes, case studies and stories

- Things that help us practice - such as games, sandboxes, job aides, simulations and ebnvrionments

- Things that help us reflect - such as presentations and seminars, blogs, wikis, discussion groups, and other ways of sharing and communicating

For any given application in each of the four categories, we can apply the remaining principles to provide an assessment of it likely effectiveness.

For example, consider the wiki. Does it support network learning? Yes - it provides examples to follow, allows correction and criticism, and rethinking and rewriting. Does it support personal learning? Yes, it engages interaction. It supports a genuine voice, experiences, opinions. It is a simple and consistent interface. It is (mostly) accessible where and when I need it.

Is the wiki reliable? Do I have diversity of sources? Yes - but only if there is a threshold number of users. Are the sources autonomous? They can be. And wikis support connectedness with links, etc, and can be open to a large number of contributors. These considerations argues against closed or private wikis, but suggest that wikis can be useful for large groups.

As another example, consider image libraries. They provide examples to follow, but our study suggests that image libraries should have (like Flickr communication channels, ratings and reviews, and ways to link images, such as tags. And an image library will be 'reliable' if it allows contributions from numerous photographers. We also see that we want people to have individual identities on Flickr, rather than just contributing to a pool, to preserve autonomy and diversity.

As a third example, consider Second Life. We can see why people are attracted to it. It allows us to create examples to follow, corrections and criticisms. It engages interaction and supports a genuine voice. But we also see weaknesses. Is Second Life a good place for reflection? There are limits on reusing what other people have created. It is also semantically weak. There is only one world, not a large number of diverse worlds. Autonomy is limited - you can't even pick your own name - and there are questions about governance. There is connectedness, through slurls, but it is not clear that it is an open platform.


7. Concluding Remarks

The purpose of this paper was to describe how network learning works and to show how an understanding of network learning can inform the design and evaluation of online learning applications.

Admittedly, there is room for debate and discussion regarding the nature and precise statement of the principles. What remains, however, is that the model of learning as a personal and a network activity provides us with concrete insights into the sort of learning environments that are most likely to be successful online.

Homework
continues to be assigned – in ever greater quantities – despite the absence
of evidence that it’s necessary or even helpful in most cases.

Finally, there isn’t a shred of evidence to support the
widely accepted assumption that homework yields nonacademic benefits
 for students of any age.  The idea that homework teaches good work
habits or develops positive character traits (such as self-discipline and
independence) could be described as an urban myth except for the fact that
it’s taken seriously in suburban and rural areas, too.

Carole Ames of Michigan State University points out that
it isn’t “quantitative changes in behavior” – such as requiring students to
spend more hours in front of books or worksheets – that help children learn
better.  Rather, it’s “qualitative changes in the ways students view
themselves in relation to the task, engage in the process of learning, and
then respond to the learning activities and situation.”  In turn, these
attitudes and responses emerge from the way teachers think about learning
and, as a result, how they organize their classrooms.  Assigning
homework is unlikely to have a positive effect on  any of these
variables.  We might say that education is less about how much the
teacher covers than about what students can be helped to discover –
and more time won’t help to bring about that shift.

Alongside an overemphasis on time is the widely held
belief that homework “reinforces” the skills that students have learned – or,
rather, have been taught -- in class.  But what exactly does this
mean?  It wouldn’t make sense to say “Keep practicing until you
understand” because practicing doesn’t create understanding – just as giving
kids a deadline doesn’t teach time-management skills.  What might make
sense is to say “Keep practicing until what you’re doing becomes automatic.” 
But what kinds of proficiencies lend themselves to this sort of improvement?

The answer is behavioral responses.  Expertise in
tennis requires lots of practice; it’s hard to improve your swing without
spending a lot of time on the court.  But to cite an example like that
to justify homework is an example of what philosophers call begging the
question.  It assumes precisely what has to be proved, which is that
intellectual pursuits are like tennis.

The assumption that they are analogous derives from
behaviorism, which is the source of the verb “reinforce” as well as the basis
of an attenuated view of learning.  In the 1920s and ‘30s, when John B.
Watson was formulating his theory that would come to dominate education, a
much less famous researcher named William Brownell was challenging the
drill-and-practice approach to mathematics that had already taken root. 
“If one is to be successful in quantitative thinking, one needs a fund of
meanings, not a myriad of ‘automatic responses,’” he wrote.  “Drill does
not develop meanings.  Repetition does not lead to
understandings.”  In fact, if “arithmetic becomes meaningful, it becomes
so in spite of drill.”

Brownell’s insights have been enriched by a long line of
research demonstrating that the behaviorist model is, if you’ll excuse the
expression, deeply superficial.  People spend their lives actively
constructing theories about how the world works, and then reconstructing them
in light of new evidence.  Lots of practice can help some students get
better at remembering an answer, but not to get better at – or even
accustomed to -- thinking.  And even when they do acquire an academic
skill through practice, the way they acquire it should give us
pause.  As psychologist Ellen Langer has shown, “When we drill ourselves
in a certain skill so that it becomes second nature,” we may come to perform
that skill “mindlessly,”  locking us into patterns and procedures that
are less than ideal. 

But even if practice is sometimes useful, we’re not
entitled to conclude that homework of this type works for most
students.  It isn’t of any use for those who don’t understand what
they’re doing.  Such homework makes them feel stupid; gets them
accustomed to doing things the wrong way (because what’s really “reinforced”
are mistaken assumptions); and teaches them to conceal what they don’t
know.  At the same time, other students in the same class already have
the skill down cold, so further practice for them is a waste of time. 
You’ve got some kids, then, who don’t need the practice and others who can’t
use it.

Furthermore, even if practice was helpful for most
students, that doesn’t mean they need to do it at home.  In my research
I found a number of superb teachers (at different grade levels and with
diverse instructional styles) who rarely, if ever, found it necessary to
assign homework.  Some not only didn’t feel a need to make
students read, write, or do math at home; they preferred to have
students do these things during class where it was possible to observe,
guide, and discuss.

Supporters of homework rarely look at things from the
student’s point of view, though; instead, kids are regarded as inert objects
to be acted on:  Make them practice and they’ll get better.  My
argument isn’t just that this viewpoint is disrespectful, or that it’s a
residue of an outdated stimulus-response psychology.  I’m also
suggesting it’s counterproductive.  Children cannot be made to acquire
skills.  They aren’t vending machines such that we put in more homework
and get out more learning.

But just such misconceptions are pervasive in all sorts
of neighborhoods, and they’re held by parents, teachers, and researchers
alike.  It’s these beliefs that make it so hard even to question the
policy of assigning regular homework.  We can be shown the paucity of
supporting evidence and it won’t have any impact if we’re wedded to folk
wisdom (“practice makes perfect”; more time equals better results). 

On the other hand, the more we learn about learning, the more willing we
may be to challenge the idea that homework has to be part of schooling. <!-- #EndEditable -->

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