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The Digital Age introduced a social realm of engagement that is unlike anything that a prior generation has experienced. The Internet of Things (IoT) has impacted every aspect of the world in which we live, wherein younger generations have never known a world in which information was not readily available at a moment’s thought that turns into actionable engagement. Recognizing the shifting environment in which teaching and learning occurs, rethinking curricular design is also impactful in this new Digital Age of not merely knowledge acquisition but more importantly critical analysis of information, and the ability of the learner to actively engage with information towards self-directed as well as self-determined learning engagement.
The ability to momentarily communicate, momentarily engage with anyone around the world exponentially expands the capabilities associated with learning and educational engagement. The community of each person expands exponentially, from a small subdivision or a small community, into a literal global community of engagement. Therefore, rethinking who are learning colleagues is impactful, from a small group of people with whom we might spend our days towards a collegial community of instructional engagement that can include collaborative connections around the world. As such, rethinking how people learn is a powerful potential towards rethinking everything that educators previously understood. Equally impactful, is rethinking how curriculum and instruction is designed, as the IoT directly supports digital impacts towards learning understanding, the speed of learning, as well as supportive engagement by the collegial community in which each of us lives out our daily life. Never before, did the suggestion that it takes a village to raise a child reflect a digital village’s capability and capacity towards fully embedding learning into normal daily experiences. An intriguing quote that guides my thoughts and the way through which I choose to view the world, especially the mysteries around the teaching and learning process, asks, “So, what if we adopted a different perspective, one that placed learning in the context of our lived experience of participation in the world?” (Wenger, 1998, p. 3; Wenger, 2009a, p. 210). Wenger’s focus upon social learning theory and social learning capability (Wenger, 2009a, 2009b) resulted in developing an understanding of learning within the community environment, named community of learning (Wenger, 2010), with a progression into learning in landscapes of practice (Wenger, 1998, 2009; Wenger-Trayner, Fenton-O’Creevy, Hutchison, Kubiak, & Wenger-Trayner, 2014; Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015), leading into information-laden value creation in social learning spaces (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020). Crawford, Young Wallace and White (2018) suggested that, “Embracing a deeper understanding of differentiated learning is a curious task in this digital world, as social media and social learning have embraced concepts around communities of learning and learning in landscapes of practice” (p. 15). Further, the approach towards learning in landscapes of practice were articulated through a progressive shift towards a larger impact approach as an understanding defined:
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We focus onlandscapes of practice, rather than single communities or networks as a key locus of social learning capability.
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We introduce the concept ofknowledgeabilityas an outcome of learning with respect to a landscape, which includes a lot of practices in which one cannot claim competence. Theoretically knowledgeability is a landscape-level counterpart to the concept of competence, which is defined at the level of communities of practice. (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2014, para. 2)
This progressive “next step” understanding leads towards an understanding around the ability to create value within social learning spaces, specifically within online learning environments that, in turn, move into the learner’s collegial community towards formative evaluating and critically analyzing information within a larger real world environment of understanding before returning to the originating learning environment for summative evaluation, re-learning or enhancements, as well as neo-social learning spaces that emphasize the viability of short-term and long-term frames of memory and understanding acquisition.