Alexander Halavais

Bio

I am a social architect, interested in ways of helping form a culture of creativity, freedom, and justice. In particular, I help people to understand how social media is changing the nature of scholarship and learning, and allowing for new forms of collaboration and self-government. I also have institutional affiliations.

Abstract

Learning in the Networked Factory

The school is a factory for factory workers. The school environment, traditionally one of enclosure, intended to shape behaviors around the time-and-space regulation of the factory (and hospital and prison), has of late begun to dissolve into networked systems. This shift from the place to the networked space of the student has been gradual, but has accelerated with the help of networking technologies in the last few years.

As this shift occurs, we can locate shear points in the fabric of the life of the learner: a sixth grader expelled for what is found on his contraband mobile phone, a fifty-year-old finishing her BA via an entirely price-driven online learning network. Five-year-olds with demanding calendars that (as with “recess” for older students and “3-day weekends” for adults) carefully hem in “play dates” designed to reflect the “work hard, play hard” motto of their parents.

At the same time, the decentralization of control provides for temporary pockets of play within the larger network. The shift in production from temporally and spatially restricted factory to ubiquitous and always-on freelance learning reflects and shapes the networked factory.