When two edu-tribes go to war…

Steve Wheeler is posting a bite-size series of blog posts over the next week around the theme of  ’Digital Tribes, Virtual Clans.‘

They are based on a chapter he contributed to a wider work entitled ‘Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures.‘ The first two posts on ‘Digital tribal identity‘ and ‘The digital tribe and the network nation‘ are highly accessible and have made fascinating reading thus far. His writing got me thinking and I respond to it, tangentially and with a lack of clarity but grateful nevertheless for its inspiration.

Wheeler asserts that the world wide web and it ‘mediating technologies’ have become a key means by which the ‘cultural capital’ of group identity is formed and maintained. Cultural capital is ‘the set of invisible bonds that tie a community together without which societal cohesiveness begins to unravel.’

New digital communities located in cyberspace, not bound by any traditional geographical, social or political boundaries, are eroding the cultures or identities of traditional tribes and clans – particularly through the superior capability of mediating technologies to effectively spread contagious, identity-shaping patterns of information or ‘memes.’

Digital communities are indeed thriving, each with their own group identity shaped by the interactions of individuals within them. However, does new ‘cultural capital’ always have an eroding, detrimental effect on the culture of traditional tribes? Can digital communities complement the cultural capital of long-standing tribes or is ongoing competitive tension inevitable? Is it possible, in the long term, for traditional tribes and clans to meld into a new shared identity that shares the best of both worlds.

In education for example, these questions and the processes that take place in the finding of the answers, seem to me to be of crucial importance. A tribe of educators has arisen online with many different clans, - its culture shaped by memes such as the importance of technologies to collaborate, to publish to real audience with authentic  purpose for effective learning.  Traditional geographically based communities of educators in local authorities and districts identify with more traditional educational memes. Will the online educational community erode the traditional one into extinction or will a new edu-tribe arise from the ashes with a culture that harnesses the potential to broaden horizons while celebrating the unique learning opportunities offered by every educational setting?

The very basics of what it means to have self-identity through time , a core character that defines everything that an individual does and is, has been changed by the world wide web. One can operate with different identities across different tribes online, in a way that just isn’t possible offline. It means that educators can identify with both the online educational clans and the traditional clans in which they find themselves too. Those educators who find themselves with a foot in both camps will be the individuals who will ‘act in concert to perpetuate the social cohesion’ of any new edu-tribe.

At the micro-level, the ‘clan’ of the classroom is the perfect example of where this melting pot of cultures can be created. About nine years ago my Year Six class were bored with using blogs and their discussion boards to communicate with peers they saw every day in meatspace. It was then that we began using the same mediating technologies to meaningfully collaborate with teachers and students from UC Berkeley’s Academic Talent programme – across the globe in the USA. The mixing of cultures – the geographically bound classroom with the  global digital connections – broadened the horizons of the pupils and myself, brought about a new culture of learning with a new identity, fuelled by memes of real purpose, real audience and real responsibility. We were still geographically bound but our classroom no longer had any walls. It was just the start to our clan adventures!

These are the type of clans that I hope will make up the edu-tribes of  the future in Northamptonshire and beyond. Swallow the meme and it just might happen!