There’s a story about a college freshman who walks into the university library for the first time and sees a long row of books, all with the same binding, on a shelf.  “What’s this?” he asks the librarian.  “What are all these books that all look the same?”

“That’s the encyclopedia,” the librarian tells him.

“Really? Cool! Somebody printed the whole thing out?” the student responds.

For students today, for the most part, “encyclopedia” means wikipedia. I don’t think there’s a college student in this country (maybe not even an elementary student) who has not used wikipedia.  Some colleges have tried to ban it, some professors say they won’t allow it as a source for research, but it is still the first reference, the go-to source, for almost any topic.  It’s comprehensive, up-to-date, and accurate (maybe not so sure about that last–at least not on every topic).  Wikipedia has several advantages over the “traditional” encyclopedia.  It can be updated quickly and frequently.  It has no real limit on size (it doesn’t have to fit on a shelf), so it can include all kinds of information, particularly about popular culture, that there would be no room for in a printed encyclopedia.  It’s searchable and most of all hyper-linked, so connections and cross-references and serendipitous discovery are at the center of the experience.  But like any tool (as you’ll read from me in the one of the readings for this unit), if it’s not used as what it is, it will be inefficient or ineffective, or even harmful.  Which is (partly) why some colleges and professors want to ban it.

For most students, other than just searching and finding an article, the bulk of wikipedia might just as well not even exist.  I hear people all the time, not just students saying things about “them” at wikipedia.  But the point of wikipedia is that there really is no “them.”  It’s US.  I know all of you have read articles on wikipedia.  But have you written any? Or even edited any?  When you read an article, do you check the talk page for that article? That’s where the action is!  I’ve been in a few editing struggles (I won’t say wars) on wikipedia myself, and I have to say that that’s where I’ve learned the most–not just about the subject, but about wikipedia, too.  When you realize that there is no “them,” that we are all editors, all wikipedians, it becomes a much more interesting and useful tool.  I would like to see college classes (maybe even this one!) instead of forbidding wikipedia, requiring it.  But requiring that students write articles, or edit existing articles.

The point of learning to ask, of google-fu and searching as a powerful act is that we get to create the information as we consume it.  That’s a concept that is new, and one that is somewhat explored in some of your readings.  When I used to use the World Book Encyclopedia as a kid, or the Encyclopedia Britannica, I would sometimes find things that I didn’t like or agree with.  But there wasn’t much I could do about that, and I had no idea about how an encyclopedia was written or assembled.  But now I do–and now I’ve done it myself.

The title of this post (“we are wikipedians”) sounds in my head like the little girl saying “we are wine bottles!” in this video

That video (apart from being one of the cutest things ever) gives a somewhat indirect example of what’s going on in the world of information right now.  “Kittens,” inspired by Kittens, could be a shorthand for the world of remixing and mashing up–where you get to create your own communities and your own publications.

As we’re talking about school and cultures (or just school, or just culture), let’s not forget that neither school nor culture is an anonymous, impersonal force.  Culture and school are both made up of people.  And people, in all settings, interact with other people.  Schools, we’ve seen and discussed, may have official characters, defined rules and policies (even mission statements), but they also have unofficial, personal, socially-defined characters.

And a big part of that is connections among and between people.  In some of our readings for unit 1 (I’m thinking particularly of the chapter from Tom Sawyer), and in some of your reflections and forum posts, a theme I kept seeing was how friendships, or sometimes the lack thereof, are a defining feature of students’ experience of school.  Many of you talked of the social dimensions of your own educational histories, and your own educational presents.  Making friends, making enemies, being bullied, being a bully, falling in love, breaking up, gossip, team work and competition–all of these are more a part of the experience of school than anything that comes out of a textbook.  We’ll see this again in the readings for this unit.

In fact, it might be the fights and the friendships, the friends and the enemies (or frenemies) which we remember the most about school.  And isn’t this true about culture, too?  If we’re talking about each of us having (being embedded in, and having embedded within us) multiple cultures, we should also be talking about the groups (of people) which form those cultures.  And it’s not all cooperation and teamwork, either.  Many times what goes on in school is about competing or struggling with another group or another people, defining oneself and one’s culture in opposition to others.  That’s part of what I mean with “frenemies.”  Fighting with someone, for young people and even older people, is sometimes a way of showing affection, or it can become affection, or it can cement affections with others.

And there’s learning there, too (which is why we remember it).  When my daughter started kindergarten, years ago, her teacher told me that the main goal of kindergarten was not teaching kids to count or to read or to know their colors and shapes.  It was teaching them to interact with each other, not to grab, not to hit, how to sit still and stand in line.  And that’s just the teacher’s idea of the social learning that has to take place in that early year.  What went on at recess, what goes on in college dorms or chatrooms or hallways or bars or Starbuck’s–that might be where some very important education (and building of culture) really happens.

As we move to the future of education, as we start opening our classrooms to the wider (online?) world, we also will see new ways for the social, interpersonal part of schooling to work.  I think that humans are endlessly adaptable in getting what they need and finding new ways to create their social spheres.  We’ve talked about how the medium of writing, or the barrier of a computer screen, may interfere with human interaction.  But I think humans need that interaction, and we find a way to get it, even if it takes a different shape.  After all, even our discussion about the ways that writing or computers can interfere with human contact took place in writing on computers! And I think those were some fairly rich discussions, and I think there’s a type of human contact–even developing friendships–happening in this class.

Or if not in this class, at least other places online.  Online friends? Online enemies? Online frenemies?  Just as in “traditional” classroom, there is a “back-channel,” an unofficial culture, and we make it (or you do) among and between and against each other, and we learn from that, too.  So what shapes will school friendships take in the future of education?  What do you think?