MOD 3 Blog - 8845

Instinct

Instinct is defined as an innate tendency or response of a given species to act in ways that are essential to its existence, development, and preservation. This definition implies that causes that affect these latter can be manipulated by external forces. During the agricultural age, families instinctually worked the land collaboratively for their existence and preservation. Before then, collaborative hunting and gathering within larger communities for the same purposes was prevalent.

Collaborations during the agricultural age did not, however, preclude the instinctual self-interests of competing farmers or plundering desperados. Nor were the hunters and gatherers safe from warring communities whose intent was territorial domination. In this manner, it can be seen that the decision to operate alone or cooperatively is a function of one’s perception of existence and self-preservation at the moment. Instinctually, one is able to do either. Moreover, the previous accounts indicate that both can, and do coexist. The question then becomes, which instinct dominates the moment?

At the onset of the industrial age, reliance on family collaboration was mitigated by a redefined need for existence and preservation. This new perspective was borne of the necessity to leave the farms to relocate to industrial centers, and then to separate from the wife and children for long hours to go earn a living in factories. This emphasis persists in today’s classrooms, where the moment is dominated by self-reliant traditional instruction.

While, like in society at-large, there is growing acceptance of the need for collaborative means, different from larger society, there exists a dearth of the trust necessary to facilitate cooperative learning in education. The macro-society appears to be modeling a trust in technologies that have realized such latter-day collaborative accomplishments as the Genome Project, CERN Particle Accelerator, and development of the Big Bang Theory, solutions that could not have been realized otherwise. In this regard, a teacher too, must trust in the virtues of the educational technologies that would leverage the power of constructivist collaboration in education. Therein, survival is defined in terms of teaching and learning.

As exemplified previously, students too have the instinctual capacity for learning either individually or collaboratively. It is the teacher’s role to manipulate the classroom micro-society and environment to connect to these instincts. Trusting in technology will aid in this process.

Trust is defined as a confident reliance on the integrity, honesty, veracity, or justice of another: It is not innately instinctual; collaborative learning is. In order to tap the instincts for collaborative learning in our students, trust for educational technology must be engendered.

Rheingold, H. (2008). Howard Rheingold: Way-New collaboration. Retrieved on April 12, 2010 from
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html