My Reading 11/24/2008

“The Less You Share, the Less Power You Have”

I absolutely agree with this topic's point, so I would like to post it on my blog.

In this rapid-growing society with overwhelmingly large numbers of knowledge and information, people need to understand that sharing is very important. I would like say that "the more you share, the more you will get and the more people get help." Apparently, it is a benevolent cycle to keep human's society progressive. The way to share the information is from traditionally oral expression to modern new stuff, such as blogging, online photo album, wiki, podcasting and so on. This is one of the reasons that I would like to start my blog although I am not that experted in writing. As far as my recent experience is concerned, I have discovered that many good resources have been put online. Those famous instructional designers or relevant professionals are generous for sharing their knowledge. I acquire what I want and try to give them feedback and generate some outputs on my blog. This forms good interaction, and is also a new learning relationships.
Nowadays, many people advocate the concept of online learning community: a group of people have common interests; through social networking and computer-mediated communications, people are allowed to address the learning needs, share information, exchange ideas by the proactive partnership. Therefore, one of the most important features in the learning community lies on sharing; if people do not undersand sharing and keep the knowledge private and secret, they always just know what they have known.

In terms of education, in traditional classroom setting, the class is instructor-led and goal-oriented, and students just need to listen to the lecture. However, sharing, inquiring, and concerning are very important elements because they foster students' communications, collaboration, and mutual interaction. How do students get full development and have their potentials stimualted in the closed learning environment? This innovative concept reminds me something that when I studied in high school, since it was very competitive to pass the exams, classmates even did not share the in-class notes. Now it looks funny, because even if no one wants to share the notes with you, you still can get a bunch of information on Internet. This non-sharing culture has deeply rooted in Asian culture for a long time. It really reflects one thing: knowledge itself is not as important as before; the most valuable thing is how we explore, interpret and even take advantage of it. Without sharing and group power, how do you do it by yourself?

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