Learning Spaces In Cyberspace

We humans are naturally social creatures.  Communication is the glue that binds us.   It is only natural that the digital world we have created reflects our love to communicate.  We have been communicating for hundreds of thousands of years.  Have the ways we communicate stayed constant? Are there fundamental things we do that are innate in who we are?

 

 Learning Spaces

I found a similar question being proposed by Dr. David Thornberg  in his article Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century  Much of our learning happens through communication so this seemed to be relevant.  He categorized learning into three different  categories called "Learning Spaces". Each learning space serves a different purpose and a successful learning experience requires all three of these.

Learning Space	Learning From	Purpose	Real World Examples
The Campfire (Lecture Space)	An Expert	One person telling a story.	Lectures, Radio, Television
Watering Hole (Collaborative Space)	Each Other	Many people discussing a topic	Panel discussions, Meetings, Telephones
Cave (Reflective Space)	Yourself	A place to be alone and think or research.	A walk in the park, Reading a book

For example, at a conference, you learn more if you have a chance to go to Presentations (Campfire), Discuss ideas with others (Watering Hole), and think about the the things that were presented and what they mean to you. (Cave).

 

Learning Spaces In Cyberspace

In the digital world, we see examples of all three as well. The most successful communication applications have a clear mapping to a learning space.

Learning Space	Types Of Service	Digital Examples
The Campfire (Lecture Space)	Push	Blogs, Twitter, Facebook Timeline
Watering Hole (Collaborative Space)	Interactive	E-Mail, Jabber, Yammer, Skype, Facebook Chat
Cave (Reflective Space)	Pull	Research tools like Wikipedia or Google

 

Google Apps For Education

SCVi Charter School makes use of Google Apps For Education which provides us with some great communication tools. Some of these tools include :

• Blogs : One person speaking to a group over time.  Postings are generally like journal entries and have a specific publish date, though they can be modified.  People can post comments, but everyone can see them so they are like an open forum.
  
• Groups: This is meant to be an area for discussion. It's interactive. Not good for "publishing" content as much as it is a way to have a searchable archive of conversations. You can have conversations go out through e-mail or have folks log on to see them.  They are not publicly visible like a blog usually would be.
  
• Sites: A place to publish different kinds of content.  Can be changed regularly. No inherent time associated with a posting.  Gives the most flexibility. Comments and discussions can probably be worked into this.  
• GMail: Google's E-mail service.
• Docs : Provides the ability to work collaboratively on content.

These products are intuitive because they can be mapped to learning spaces.

Learning Space	Google Product	Example
The Campfire (Lecture Space)	Blogs, Sites	A single storyteller publishing content.
Watering Hole (Collaborative Space)	GMail, Groups, Docs	Collaborative work or communication
Cave (Reflective Space)	Google Search	Research tools that allow you to discover on your own

 

Another Example : Jive SBS

Jive SBS is a "Social Business Software"  that is often used inside companies to facilitate internal communication.  One clever thing about Jive is that intrinsically provides different avenues for different learning spaces. Here's a few of the Jive content types that  map to learning spaces.

Learning Space	Jive  Content Type	Description	Typical Content
The Campfilre	Blogs	One Person talking to a group over time	Meeting Notes,  Reports, Events
The Watering Hole	Discussions, Polls	Interactive discussions outside of an e-mail thread	Problems, proposals, new ideas
?	Documents	Collaborative living documentation	Documentation, Policies, Procedures

Notice that it's not clear if a Document is a Campfire, Watering Hole, or Cave.  The problem here is that, unlike Google Docs, the Jive docs to not allow real time collaboration.  This keeps it from working very well as a watering hole.  This also makes it confusing for people on when to use documents at all.  This divergence from our naturally understood methods of communication is bound to cause confusion.

Summary

So, When looking at how you communicate in an organization, the closer you can come to using our intrinsically understood learning spaces, the more likely you'll be able to find something that works.