Halley talks about learning about air traffic control from a friend.
To rely on personal contact to spur your learning or curiosity seems a haphazard way to increase your knowledge, but it happens all the time in our lives once we are out of school. These days however, blogs are doing just that — making a wide range of subjects interesting, engaging, accessible and fascinating simply by the fact that you sense an intimate connection and a personal voice at the other end of the information.
This only seems unusual because we’ve been introctrinated with the weird idea that learning is something kids acquire in a school building from professional teachers. Humans have learned from peers and mentors, throughout the human lifespan, for as long as primates have been able to transmit ideas about tools, culture, history, and behavior.
In addition to Halley’s good point about blogs, I have a weird theory that wikis will help this renaissance in grownup learning. I know several book club wikis already. Wikis are gaining interest among “communities of practice” — groups of grownups who want to share learning outside academia. Wikis are great for individuals building a vocabulary in a subject, and wonderful for groups building shared understanding.
Blogs help to discover and browse new ideas, through the lens of another passionate human. Wikis help to build personal and shared memory as people learn.