A New Culture of Learning

We learn those things by watching, doing, experimenting, and simply absorbing knowledge from the things, events, and activities around us.

Each class featured a lecture for the first hour and a half, followed by forty-five minutes of discussion, and then a half hour of show-and-tell,

The result is a system of reciprocity, where both sets of astronomers are invested and take an active role in learning from each other.

Inquiry is an extremely powerful technique for learning because it produces stockpiles of experiences. Things that result in dead ends for one particular question may wind up being unexpectedly useful later on—even, perhaps, for a completely different question.

In the twenty-first century, however, knowledge is becoming less a question of “What is the information?” and more of a “Where is the information?”

Embracing change and seeing information as a resource can help us stop thinking of learning as an isolated process of information absorption and start thinking of it as a cultural and social process of engaging with the constantly changing world around us.

Making knowledge stable in a changing world is an unwinnable game.

For our purposes, collectives are not solely defined by shared intention, action, or purpose (though those elements may exist and often do). Rather, they are defined by an active engagement with the process of learning.

Children use play and imagination as the primary mechanisms for making sense of their new, rapidly evolving world. In other words, as children encounter new places, people, things, and ideas, they use play and imagination to cope with the massive influx of information they receive. Child developmental psychologist Jean Piaget found that information