We the students of McDonald Camplese High School have a dream. Our dream is for a community in which we have agency over our own learning and opportunity to focus on social relationships and collaboration. We want free time, later start times and more choice over our classes. We dislike overcrowding in classes and halls, and long and boring class periods. We expect that school will prepare us for our future and we want school to be more meaningful, more fun and a more engaging place- a place we want to go each day.
Team 1 Final Synthesis
Here is the link to our presentation. There are things on it that we didn’t get to cover, so feel free to ask us any questions/make comments about that material or anything that we did cover as well.
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=d4rbhwb_7g4cxfqv9&invite=1268029719
Resources 3 & 4
Hall, T. & Bannon, L. (2006). Designing ubiquitous computing to enhance children’s learning in museums. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (22), 231 – 243.
This article draws on research conducted at the Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland regarding the integration of computing technology into children’s museum experiences. Children (and others) often perceive museums as somber and boring spaces and museum officials are looking for ways to change this perception using technology. Several types of technologies, including sensors and RFID systems, were integrated into the Re-tracing the Past exhibit and research was done to see the effects of the technologies on children’s learning experiences. Based on their (generally positive) findings, the authors recommend 12 guidelines for designing novel computing to enhance children’s learning experiences in museums and five guidelines for the design process itself (pp. 240 – 241).
Hsi, S. & Fait, H. (2005). RFID enhances visitors’ museum experience at the Exploratorium. Communications of the ACM (48)9, 60 – 65.
This article discusses the use of RFID (radio frequency identification) technologies in museum settings, specifically their use at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA. The system at the Exploratorium is called the eXspot and it allows visitors to capture information about exhibits that they visit, capture souvenir photos that they take at the museum, and access these photos along with online content related to exhibits they have visited on personalized web pages. RFID technologies enhance visitors’ experiences and are also appealing to museums because of their relatively low cost and the potential for improving visitors’ learning experiences. Research has documented that visitors typically remain at exhibits for only 30 seconds and museums are hoping that experiences enhanced by RFID will dramatically increase this statistic.
Article #2
Rusk, N., Resnick, M., & Cooke, S. (2009). Origins and guiding principles of the Computer Clubhouse. In Y. B. Kafai, K. A. Peppler & R. N. Chapman (Eds.), The Computer Clubhouse: Constructionism and Creativity in Youth Communities (pp. 17 – 25). New York: Teachers College Press.
Our team is researching the topic of technology in informal/non-formal education settings and this article discusses a particular program that is based specifically on the use of technology. The program, called Computer Clubhouse, was started over 15 years ago in response to youth’s interest in a hands-on program that had taken place at the Computer Museum in Boston. In the article the authors discuss the principles that were used to found the program and which still heavily influence it today. These principles speak directly to our course topics of community, identity, and design.
The first principle is to support learning through design experiences. The authors believe that “too many educational initiatives try to transmit or deliver information to learners” (p. 18) so this principle, based on constructionism, seeks to allow learning to be a creative process, where learners are creating something that is meaningful to themselves or others around them. The authors include the creative design spiral (see below) to illustrate the process that Clubhouse members use when working on projects.
The second principle of the Clubhouse is to help members build on their own interests. As the authors state, “helping youth develop their interests is not just a matter of letting them do what they want… they need support to make [their] fantasies come true” (p. 20). Under this principle, technology (specifically the computer) is used in many different domains, allowing students to try out a variety of things like music, art, math and science. Students are encouraged to develop their own identities through exposure to a wide variety of activities.
The third principle is to cultivate an emergent community of learners. The typical computer lab closely resembles the first of the two pictures that we (Team 1) posted in class on Tuesday. Computer Clubhouse spaces are designed to have the feel of a creative design studio and to facilitate students (and students and mentors) working together. Communities emerge over time based on common interests and students are able to “float” in and out of communities at any time as their interests develop/change. The communities include mentors from diverse cultural and academic/professional backgrounds, which allows students to be exposed to people who are working on things that they care about. This may be something that these students do not get to experience outside of the Clubhouse environment.
The final principle of the Clubhouse is to create an environment of respect and trust. None of the other principles can be put into practice without this type of environment. Students need a place where they feel safe to try new things and where they will not be criticized for their ideas or mistakes.
The Clubhouse provides a good model for a successful informal/non-formal education program that integrates technology. In my opinion, it also provides a good model that formal education should try to embrace. I often wonder why some schools/teachers tend to see things like respect for students and their interests and the development of community as less than important in the traditional school setting. If these principles were applied in “regular” school settings, perhaps more students would be successful and see school in a positive light.
Annotated Article #1
Romi, S. & Schmida, M. (2009). Non-formal education: a major educational force in the postmodern era. Cambridge Journal of Education 39(2), 257 – 273.
In this article the authors attempt to define and operationalize the term non-formal education (NFE) more clearly than they believe has been done in the past. Citing authors such as Dewey and Kahane, they define NFE as an educational-pedagogical activity that takes place outside of school, free of the structural and formal conditions usually present in school, and in which people participate by choice. According to the authors, the main differences between NFE and formal education are more flexibility, greater freedom of space and time, and the use of “‘quality norms’ rather than ‘regulatory and punitive approaches'” (p. 269) in NFE. The authors also discuss the impact of NFE on participants’ identities, stating that, “NFE aims, to a great extent, to help adolescents cope with their struggle toward forming their personal identity” (p. 266) and that NFE “enables group members to assume different roles, and even different identities, according to changing conditions” (p. 267). Finally, the authors discuss the use of technology in NFE. They believe that technology can support NFE through the formation of computerized learning environments, providing learners with success that may not be attainable in traditional formal settings. Technology can also support NFE through the application of distance education, specifically in areas where formal education may be lacking.
Teaching and Learning in Digital Dialogue
Presented at TLT Symposium by Chris Long and student panel
Based on PHIL 200
Using technology is about relinquishing control and allowing students to take ownership of their own experience (ownership of meaning a la Wenger)
Similarities between this course and ours (ci597):
*Blog used for self-reflection
*Students were encouraged to tweet during class, but there was resistance
*Weekly podcasts were submitted to summarize the course material (similar to our weekly posts)
*Blogs allowed for discussion beyond what was possible within the time allotted for the class
Key points:
*Enduring dialogue results when we strive together for understanding.
*The “conversation” that took place on the blog motivated the students to keep writing more and better
*The less the teacher commented on the blogs themselves, the better they seemed to work
*Assessment: If they didn’t do the blogs, they weren’t participating [This fits with our previous class discussion on participation and the assessment of participation.]
*When we teachers talk about community we have to recognize that we as faculty are part of that community.
Within the course they had to deal with an anonymous person who was posting inappropriately and attacking student posts on the blog. It turned out to be a learning experience for teacher and students, but was a real struggle for everyone. [How would we handle this situation if it came up in our class?]
Anonymity protects the person speaking the words, but threatens those of us who are hearing it (uncertainty, no physical referents, etc.).
Team 1- Community 3
Our group decided to post individual thoughts and a synthesis this week.
MICHELLE:
One thing that was interesting to me in the reading for this week was the idea of participation/non-participation. Our group has talked about this before, but this quote really stood out to me this time: “The mix of participation and non-participation that shapes our identities has to do with communities in which we become invested, but it also has to do with our ability to shape the meanings that define these communities.” (p. 188). It is again this cyclical relationship between community and identity. My community shapes my identity and my identity shapes my community. At this point I wonder if it is ever possible (or even desirable) to separate the two. Does a change in my identity necessitate a change in my community? Does a change in my community necessitate a change in my identity? Hmm…
The discussion of learning communities was also really interesting to me. Because he believes that learning entails both a process and a place, Wenger seems to be saying that it is a process of becoming (transforming our identities) within a community of practice, which he says is a “privileged locus for the acquisition of knowledge” (p. 214). I am struggling a bit with what Wenger means by “privileged” here. Is he saying that communities of practice are the best (or at least better) places for learning? If so, I wonder if this is true (that COPs are privileged) given the fact that it is possible for me to learn things on my own. Does my learning improve or change in some way because I do it within a community of practice? Can I learn just as well outside of one? Obviously the process would be different, but would it (learning outside of a COP) be any less effective? This makes me think about our discussion of open education and students who do online courses or independent study classes. Is the quality of their learning different than the quality of learning of students who do so in a “traditional” classroom setting?
Finally, on p. 217 Wenger says that “our communities must have a place for us that does justice to the transformations of identity that reflection and excursions can produce.” When I think about this in terms of teaching, it reminds me that as teachers we need to help our students reflect on their learning so that they can better understand themselves. We also need to help them step outside of themselves and take different perspectives (this is how I interpret excursion) so that they can better understand others. We need to provide communities in which our students are safe to “try on” the new identities that come about as the result of the learning that is taking place. Wenger says that learning transforms who we are (which I think is totally true- I am certainly not the same person that I was when I started my PhD program in August) and we need to be mindful that our students are actually changing as a result of what they are taking in. We are not simply filling empty vessels with knowledge; we are impacting, in one way or another, who our students are (or at least how they perceive themselves to be).
AARON:
On page 211 Wenger states “Working with the economy of meaning can be a way to preserve the community by sharing ownership of meaning. For instance, involving everyone in a decision complicates the process of arriving at that decision and may bring into the open all kinds of disagreements. Yet this sharing of ownership of meaning may well result in a deeper commitment to the community”. This quote really stuck out to me because I wonder how common is this example in the real world. How many of us like making decisions, especially tough ones? What about decisions made by school boards? Should they include everyone in the district community including the general public to offer input into the decision or should they make the decision behind closed doors? Granted by bringing in the “public” (and by “public” I really want to say community members but I don’t want to offer any confusion here) one would expect more disagreement as stated above, but it would also strengthen the school board’s position in the whole community.
Then on page 212 Wenger explains why we form communities. “We form communities not because we fall short of an ideal of individualism or freedom, but because identification is at the very core of the social nature of our identities and so we define even our individualism and our freedom in that context. On the other hand, communities give rise to economies of meaning not because we are evil, self-interested, or short-sighted, but because negotiability – and thus contestability – is at the very core of the social nature of our meanings and so we construct even our shared values in that contest.”
With these two quotes I then move into the learning community which I feel ties these quotes together with (page 219) “A learning community confronts structural issues of identification and negotiability both internally and externally. A learning community is therefore fundamentally involved in social reconfiguration: its own internally as well as its position within broader configurations” (page 220).
NICOLE:
In this last section of the book, Wenger attends to the definition of participation, specifically dealing with non-participation. It is clear that the idea of difference has a large affect on how community involvement helps form identity: “We not only produce our identities through practices we engage in, but we also define ourselves through practices we do not engage in” (p. 164). Communities as a whole emphasize our abilities to construct identity through “relations of belonging or not belonging.” It is within difference that communities and identities are constructed. The idea of difference here remind me of the works of constructionists like Foucalt and the idea that meaning is relational, that we understand a word or concept not for what it is, but for what it is not. According to Stuart Hall, “If you couldn’t differentiate between Red and Green, you couldn’t use one to mean ‘Stop’ and the other to mean ‘Go'” (Hall, Representation). We can also connect the concept to Gee. For example, I know I’m not a gang member because I belong to a Discourse of …
Another area of Wenger’s argument reminiscent of Foucault is his idea of power. Wenger views matters of power “in terms of the negotiation of meaning and the formation of identities – that is, as a property of social communities” (p. 189). My interpretation of Foucalt is that he understood the same negotiation of meaning was inherent in social practices. Though meaning, for Foucalt, came from small d discourse, which deemphasized the role of the participants (to use Wenger’s term) in actively constructing that meaning. Wenger, in contrast, asserted that power was a social concept created by a community.
The concept that there are types of communities beyond communities of practice seems like a concrete connection to our discussion of the bad driver comes into play (p. 181). Just because a large number of people like the same television show does not make that group a community of practice, according to Wenger. With this in mind, does the term “bad driver” refer to a community of practice? Probably not. Does it refer to a different type of community? Perhaps. As Wenger says, “Belonging to such a community can contribute to the identities of those involved, even if it does not involve the joint development of a shared practice” (p. 182).
Maybe I missed this in the reading, but one question that I have in particular is how do Engagement, Imagination, and Alignment concretely differ from participation? Wenger referred to them as “modes of belonging” (p. 172) – how do they go beyond just different ways of participating?
SYDNEY:
The modes of belonging -engagement, imagination, and alignment- are the important ingredients of understanding how communities are constituted. When focusing on the mechanism of community formation, the various combination of these three ingredients explains the variety of community types. The changing relations between these three elements over time analyzes the transformations of these communities (p. 183).
I found it interesting that the modes of belonging- engagement, imagination, and alignment- are also important elements of learning. The three factors that explain the construction of communities also apply to the dynamics of learning. A community of practice can be a learning community enlightening the fact that a community provides the place for “the acquisition of knowledge” and “the creation of knowledge” (p. 214). Wenger mentions combining the modes of belonging, saying that the three elements anchor learning “in practice yet make it broad, creative and effective in the wider world” (p. 217). Such combinations allow “a learning community to move in various ways between participation and non-participation in order to create a richer context for learning” (p. 217). I think that community provides an opportunity of becoming members within a community by giving context for developing new understanding, negotiating between new meanings and identity, and transforming identity accordingly. It seems to me that multimembership provides more learning sources.
SYNTHESIS:
Many of the ideas about community mentioned in our responses above can be related to the current hot topic of the 2010 US Census. Here is a video in which non-participation is being encouraged:
*Does the rationale behind why this guy doesn’t want to participate in the census mean that he isn’t part of a community of political citizens?
*What does it do to a community when some members encourage others into willing non-participation?
*To what level are dissidents still members of the original community? Does their extreme non-participation shift their membership in some way?
On the opposite side, here is a video that is encouraging participation from a particular segment of the population (Thai)
*We wonder what impact this ad (and others like it for other communities) actually has on the members of the community. Does it really make them decide to participate if they had previously decided not to? Does it sway someone who might previously have been ambivalent?
*If a person chooses non-participation in this situation is he/she viewed as somehow hurting the community because his/her participation would (might?) bring some benefit to the community?
Team 1 Class Leadership
Our plan for class: 2 March
Activity: Good design remixing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdxPc5a5OPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXGyI8zNegI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esjH7HiqWxg&feature=related
Education
-What does “good design” in education look like?
-What happens if teachers fall into the “late majority/laggards” category of adopting innovations while students are “innovators/early adopters”?
-The idea of students as consumers- How can we use students’ feedback of what works for them to enhance class design? What happens if we are more “innovation-oriented” than “client-oriented” in our classrooms?
-What are the connections between education and innovations? How does education impact the diffusion of innovation? (refer to Brad’s response- How much is education about helping beneficial innovations diffuse by opening minds to change and experimentation?)
Additional questions to consider:
– Instructional manuals: Items that are created to be used universally still need instruction booklets and quick start guides. How often do we go beyond the quick start guide and actually look at the instruction manual? Do we just get the basics and then hope that we know enough to do what we want/need to do?
-Are we more likely to accept innovations that are communicated to us through our established communities because of the homophily that exists? Do we think that if it works for someone who is similar to ourselves then it will work for us as well? How does the notion of “if it works for someone else it may work for me” fit into our own identity?
Team 1- Community Pt. 2
We “spiced” up our thinking about community for this week. Click on the nodes to get to the next level(s) and see what we thought about Wenger and the 95 Theses. You can also drag the nodes around for easier viewing.
If you have trouble viewing it here, this URL also links to our map:
http://www.spicynodes.org/a/bbb34944f3796879244d10a1c2d6e27f
Disruptive technologies, from my perspective(s)
When I think about disruptive technologies, I think about them in two different ways. First, I think of them from the perspective of a teacher and then from the perspective of a student.
From my perspective as a teacher, disruptive technologies mean just what the term sounds like- technologies that disrupt the classroom. At one time the idea of disruption had a negative connotation for me, in that it seemed like something that would distract students and take away from their focus in the classroom, keeping them from learning what I want them to learn in the way that I want them to learn it. That is, of course, an antiquated (but not uncommon) way to think as a teacher. Fortunately, both my understanding of the nature of teaching and my practice have evolved over time. I have also developed a different understanding of the term ‘disruptive’, one that is more similar to the one stated in the Camplese and McDonald article (2010), where disruptive innovations are defined as those which “significantly alter current patterns of social functioning” (p. 1). Using that definition, I understand disruptive technologies to be those technologies, both software and hardware, which help me, as a teacher, to disrupt students’ current ways of thinking and help them to develop relationships and ideas that change the way that they interact with the world around them, including the information that I present to them in the classroom. It is sometimes (ok, always) hard for teachers to give up full control of their classrooms, but if we want to bring about change in our students’ lives, then we really do need to disrupt the status quo of the educational system.
From my perspective as a student, disruptive technologies are things that take me out of my comfort zone (sometimes WAY out of it) and push me to experience and think about things in new ways. In my role as student, disruptive technologies are uncomfortable (actually, they are in my role as teacher, as well). The idea of recording my voice and image and putting it “out there” for anyone to see is foreign and more than a little bit unnerving. The idea of putting all of my assignments in a place where everyone can read them also feels somewhat awkward. I realize, though, that using these technologies is allowing me to look at material in ways that I never have before. It is also helping me to broaden my perspectives and it is increasing my willingness to step outside the box that students are traditionally expected to remain within. In fact, I am experiencing what I want my own students to be able to experience through my use of disruptive technologies in the classroom. And how liberating of an experience it is!