feedback & JSB

I am reading the John Seely Brown stuff, especially that which relates to lurking and learning. This quote of his appears all over the web: "The culture of the Internet allows you to link, lurk, and learn. You can move from the periphery to the centre safely asking a question—sometimes more safely virtually than physically, and then back out again. It has provided a platform for perhaps the most successful form of learning that civilization has ever seen". John Seely Brown sees non-active participation (lurking, and read-only) as having positive aspects within online learning communities. So I am trying to read a little more about the non-interactive component of online learning (to contrast it with the interactive [feedback] of discussion boards).

I also found this quote about how people learn: "Because many new technologies are interactive, it is now easier to create environments in which students can learn by doing, receive feedback, and continually refine their understanding and build new knowledge." I've lost the reference so will try to find it tomorrow. It's from the book 'How People Learn' by Bradford, but I can't find the web article that discussed it... it was interesting. I'll have another bash tomorrow.

I'd like to hover for a moment over the last part of the sentence: "...continually refine their understanding and build new knowledge" and see how it fits in with the quote the Williams paper that I looked at in my 'blogger = lurker?' post: "Discussion and sharing experience have been identified as two of the most effective means by which adults learn". The way that lurkers (and bloggers) would refine and consolidate would be *away from* the online community. This makes me wonder whether lurkers are actually getting the most from the learning experience? Is their lurking detrimental of their learning?