Creative Learning Spaces
Instead of going to a creative learning space with a
physical locality (because I really don’t know where to turn to), I visited a
virtual one where community learning is observed. It is a website called “The
Fresh Loaf”(http://www.thefreshloaf.com/), dedicated to the establishment of “a community for amateur artisan
bakers and bread enthusiasts.” Obviously, the projects people are working on
are bread baking, and their individual experiences are later shared through forums,
blogs, recipes, and discussions about bread bakers’ attempts, failures, and
successes. Videos and links enrich the content. The diversity of the projects involved, or the
various bread covered (totally unknown to me) is exhibited on the homepage
through links to: recent forum posts and comments, baker blogs and comments, bread
browser, advanced and professional topics, favorite site recipes, and “the
bread feed.”
The site encourages beginners to learn by offering five lessons
for the first-time baker, a handbook, and “a distillation of the baking wisdom
of the Fresh Loaf community.” Moreover, this is a place where novices can learn
from experts or veterans. For example, in the “Forums” and under the topic of “Artisan
Baking”, a user identified his/her problem in baking and asked for help: “This
is my first time using the forum, although I've often read threads for tips and
gotten some great advice. There are some
talented bakers here so I hope someone can help shed some light on a persistent
issue I'm having with my sourdough loaves.” This request was posted at 5am and
it got its first response at 8:25am. The conversation between the amateur baker
and responding experts went on till late in the afternoon. Some suggested it
might be the yeast or the salt that caused the problem. Finally, the question
initiator seemed satisfied with the help he got from others by saying in
his/her final post: “Wow—first just want to say how grateful I am that you
folks would take time out of your day to provide real guidance to a passionate
amateur. Thank you!”
There seems to be a shared value in this community for the more
experienced to come to the aid of new bakers. One user asks a question and
shares a problem, others offer their insights or suggestions. Sometimes, the
veteran users refer to older content by citing links or by posting photos of
bread they have baked. Some would refer to a link in YouTube. Veteran users
seem to assume the role of mentoring and those who get mentored are always grateful
after they learned from an online interaction with those who offer help through
recipe sharing, photo diagnosing, trouble shooting and so on.
The site is also a place for achievement exhibition. Right on
the homepage in the most salient place is the photos of bread-baking success, which
in turn link to a story or the recipe of how this special bread is created. Often,
this is followed by comments of admiration in response. I think this is a great
way for bakers to build up their identity and identification with the community
when their individual creative projects are evaluated through collective acclamation.
I am also amazed by how seriously bakers take the
measurement of the ingredients of their recipes. It seems that the use of
metric measures of weight rather than volumetric measures like cups, teaspoons,
etc. can distinguish experts from amateurs. For experts, every gram counts. Through
the exhibition of their gram-based recipe, the experts are also demonstrating the
implicit learning process through which their knowledge is constructed: the day
by day experiments in which various ingredients are meticulously measured and
documented so as to test the following success or failure.
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