Discussion Questions for Class on 02.07.08
When does a teaching environment become a learning community?
What does it mean to engage in meaningful activity that is focused on a goal in the context of school (k-12 or higher ed)?
Is there a real life identity that is separate or more real than the multiple online identities? Does this depend on the person? Is RL identity monolithic, and if not, what parts are the real parts?
What does a community of practice approach mean for collaboration in schools? How do you do assessment?
What is the impact of all this multitasking on students and their connection to communities? What about their identity?
How is it different to respond to these questions directly in the course blog versus posting into the Pligg environment?
What does it mean to engage in meaningful activity that is focused on a goal in the context of school (k-12 or higher ed)?
Is there a real life identity that is separate or more real than the multiple online identities? Does this depend on the person? Is RL identity monolithic, and if not, what parts are the real parts?
What does a community of practice approach mean for collaboration in schools? How do you do assessment?
What is the impact of all this multitasking on students and their connection to communities? What about their identity?
How is it different to respond to these questions directly in the course blog versus posting into the Pligg environment?
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I'll respond to the last question first. Responding in the Pligg environment may or may have already become cumbersome because of the sheer number of entries to navigate and sort through. Another issue with the Pligg environment is that it is more open in the sense of topics can evolve, change, or be added by anyone. This class blog environment is easier to navigate because of less content and the fact that it appears to be limited to the class participants. From an assessment and teaching point of view I feel that both environments are beneficial tools but this class blog environment would likely take me less time to "grade" as a teacher. I speculate that it also would be easier to keep students on topic in the class blog, if that is the teacher's desire.
This provides a nice transition to responding to the second question in the list.
"What does it mean to engage in meaningful activity that is focused on a goal in the context of school (k-12 or higher ed)?"
I'll attempt a description of meaningful activity. I think meaningful activity in the school and online context is any activity that enriches student learning. This activity can be one that promotes research, conversation that leads to building common understanding, or peer analysis of data/findings. An overriding requirement of all of these activities is that they must be on topic. For example in an earth science unit the topic could be anything related to seismology or general scientific processes.
disclaimer--I do not yet do HTML tags for style, so sorry about the formatting. See my blog for the proper format for Table 1.
A teaching environment becomes a learning community when it achieves the character of a transactional exchange of information. To put it another way, it is when the conversation and negotiation between learners, facilitators and the environment becomes equilibrated. A transaction orientation, according to John Miller (1996), requires a more sensitive interplay than the transmission position (core curriculum a la Hirsch, 1986). Transmission--to fill the learners with information-- contrasts to transaction where knowledge is not an objective entity that students compete for from an authority who hoards and doles out the information. Paulo Friere (1998) wrote:
...teaching cannot be a process of transference of knowledge from the one teaching to the learner. This is the mechanical transference from which results machinelike memorization, which I have already criticized. Critical study correlates with teaching that is equally critical, which necessarily demands a critical way of comprehending and of realizing the reading of the word and that of the world, the reading of text and of context. (page 22)
In transaction, knowledge is generated in relationships between people, through conversation and dialogue, and in relationships between the learner and the larger world, through meaningful activities, experimentation, and adventure (Miller, 1996).
Meaningful has different meanings for different learners and the meaning is based upon where the learners are in context. Each learner brings to the table a unique identity complete with a unique set of understandings. As Friere (1998) understood...
...our relationship with the learners demands that we respect them and demands equally that we be aware of the concrete conditions of their world, the conditions that shape them. To try to know the reality that our students live is a task that the educational practice imposes on us: Without this, we have no access ' to the way they think, so only with great difficulty can we perceive what and how they know. (page 58)
Meaningful can pertain to the object of the learning, the value of the learning, or the knowing itself.
Only insofar as learners become thinking subjects, and recognize that they are as much thinking subjects as are the teachers, is it possible for the learners to become productive subjects of the meaning or knowledge of the object. It is in this dialectic movement that teaching and learning become knowing and reknowing. The learners gradually know what they did not yet know, and the educators reknow what they knew before. (Friere, 1998, page 90)
Assessment in a community of practice (Gonzalez, 2004) in which knowledge is created and shared could look at evaluation of the meaningful from three different perspectives: first, assess the learners as individuals who contribute to the creation of knowledge, second, assess their understandings as members of the community who help co-construct knowledge through their participation, and finally, assess the impact of the curriculum/learning on learner progress or practice.
For the on-line community, the meaning and assessment of the transactions is really no different than great classroom culture and climate for learning in a place-based setting. The precepts are the same.
Table 1. Methods and Sources of Evaluation from Gonzalez-Lloret (2004)
Assessment categories
Methods
Sources
As an individual
Sense of accomplishment Self-reflection Projects discussion forum
Quality of contributions Qualitative rubric Teacher's grade
Satisfaction with the process Self-reflection E-mail, projects, discussion forum
Ability to work at one' s own pace On-line course records Server files
Sense of self-expression and reflection Self-assessment Final evaluation/questionnaire
As part of the learning community
Shared knowledge and co-construction of meaning Practical inquiry model
Evaluation of tasks, artifacts
Self-reflection Projects
Discussion forum
Project assessment criteria
Expert-novice relationship Self-reflection E-mail
Discussion forum entries
Chat room
Identity and sense of community Self-reflection Forum entries
Projects
Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers - Letters to those who dare teach, Translated by Donoldo Macedo, Dale Koike, and Alexandre Oliveira, Westview Press, Boulder, CO,.
Gonzalez-Lloret, M. (2004) On-line assessment through communities of practice. NFLRC Symposium : Distance Education, Distributed Learning, and Language Instruction, University of Hawai'i, Manoa. Retrieved February 10, 2008 from http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW44/gonzalez.htm
Hirsch, E.D. (2008) http://coreknowledge.org/CK/index.htm
Miller, J. P. (1996) The holistic curriculum. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Press (revised edition),.
Addendum to my comment above:
The learners gradually know what they did not yet know, and the educators reknow what they knew before. (Friere, 1998, page 90)
Reading Wenger(1998)again, His conclusion in Chapter 1 presents an analogy that says exactly what Friere said(above): (note same year)
In this interplay, our experience and our world shape each other, a reciprocal relation that goes to the very essence of who we are...
The world as we shape it, and our experience as the world shapes us are like the mountain and the river. They shape each other, but they have
their own shape They are reflections of each other, but they have their own existence, in their own realms. They fit around each other,
they remain distinct from each other They cannot be transformed by each other, yet they transform each other. The river only carves,
the mountain only guides, yet in their interaction, the carving becomes the guiding and the guiding becomes the carving.
Interplay, knowing and reknowing. This is what makes meaning in lives of teacher and learner intertwined. As Dewey believed, it is the transaction of the organism and the environment in that moment that meaning is made and learning happens.
I guess the burning questions is:
How do we communicate this to curriculum developers, some teachers and political powers?
Addendum to my comment above:
The learners gradually know what they did not yet know, and the educators reknow what they knew before. (Friere, 1998, page 90)
Reading Wenger(1998)again, His conclusion in Chapter 1 presents an analogy that says exactly what Friere said(above): (note same year)
In this interplay, our experience and our world shape each other, a reciprocal relation that goes to the very essence of who we are...
The world as we shape it, and our experience as the world shapes us are like the mountain and the river. They shape each other, but they have
their own shape They are reflections of each other, but they have their own existence, in their own realms. They fit around each other,
they remain distinct from each other They cannot be transformed by each other, yet they transform each other. The river only carves,
the mountain only guides, yet in their interaction, the carving becomes the guiding and the guiding becomes the carving.
Interplay, knowing and reknowing. This is what makes meaning in lives of teacher and learner intertwined. As Dewey believed, it is the transaction of the organism and the environment in that moment that meaning is made and learning happens.
I guess the burning questions is:
How do we communicate this to curriculum developers, some teachers and political powers?
The discussion questions really helped focus the reading. They may have helped more if I read the questions before I read the reading. Alas.
I'll tackle the first and last questions here.
A teaching environment becomes a learning community when there is active participation from both the teacher and the students. There is a shift from the traditional setup of the omniscient teacher telling the students what they need to know for the test to one of mutual engagement. Each member can contribute lessons to the other members. Wenger highlights the importance of diversity among members of a community. The heterogeneity of experiences provides a broader knowledge base. I think this works best when all members have a certain baseline knowledge and all members can safely make certain assumptions to reduce the amount of background needed for entries.
Responding here feels more like authoring a blog entry than just leaving a comment because it is in that form. Additionally, comments here are published subject to approval and have a delay compared to the instant publication of the pligg comments. Responding here does keep everything in one place, which is easier for one-stop browsing.
It appears these comments weren't subject to approval. My prior post should therefore be considered hypothetically.
A teaching environment becomes a learning community when users are able to interact with not only those within the classroom walls but also to those outside of it in order to increase the knowledge base of the class. Any time members within the learning community negotiate and share ideas and theories, they are engaging in meaningful activities. These activities become goal-based whenever an outcome is established before the negotiation occurs.
According to Sherry Turle and the people that she surveyed in "Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet," RL (real-life) is just one more screen and many times a MUD (multi-user domain) is more real than RL. However, I disagree with this statement about MUDs and RL. I feel that a real life identity will always be more "real" than multiple online identities because of the face-to-face interaction that occurs in real-time. The only time this becomes gray is when someone's real life identity is the interaction between themself and their computer. In this case, where there is seldom any face-to-face interaction, sometimes an online identity is more "real".
The main difference of a community of practice approach in regards to collaboration in schools is with negotiation and reification instruments. Usually, the emphasis of collaboration is on a shared effort. If negotiation became the focus of collaboration, students would be encouraged to share more ideas and theories. Students would not be allowed to "piggy-back" off of other students. They would not be allowed to agree with whoever they thought was the smartest. Instead, each member would have an equal part in the community and collaboration.
As students connect to many different online communities and their ability to multitask increases, they are able to break up their identities into many pieces and not spend as much time in one community as they would 50 years ago. 50 years ago, a boy would spend all of his time in one or two communities in RL. Now, that same boy can spend time in those same two communities but also spend time in hundreds of virtual communities as well. The benefit of being a part of many different communities is that a person is able to be everything that they want to be. The problem is that people then are more prone to wear masks in their real lives.
Responding to these questions was different than responding in the Pligg environment in two ways. First, the gui (graphical user interface) was not as aesthetically sound as Pligg. It was harder to see where one user's comments ended and another's began.
Second, because we replied to many different questions at the same time, it was a lot harder to read another's comments because they were responding to so many different issues. I find it more enjoyable when the comments are very focused on only one or two different issues. When that occurs, you can skip through others comments to find what you were hoping to add to.
When does a teaching environment become a learning community?
What does it mean to engage in meaningful activity that is focused on a goal in the context of school (k-12 or higher ed)?
A teaching environment becomes a learning community when all of the participants are engaged in meaningful activity. The teacher must step outside the role of authoritarian figure and become a learner alongside his or her students.
This meaningful activity may include dialouge, research, and creating some final project that resonates with each member of the community. It must be related to something all members find attachment.
A teaching environment can become a learning community by shifting perspectives. When a teacher admits, internally if not externally, that they do not know everything and it is ok for their students to understand that. When a teacher says, “I don’t know, what do you think …” a student transforms from a receptacle to a contributor. Community implies inclusion, commonality and shared interests; when an environment of collective inquiry is established, the teacher is sending a message, “We are in this together, let’s figure it out!” Such a perspective shift does not imply a necessity for teacher ignorance, quite the contrary, it is essential for teacher’s to understand their subject in order to guide discussion and know when explanations are productive. But it is the manner in which this mastery is conveyed which converts a teaching environment into a learning community.
Of course, such a shift would also require an altered view of student mastery as well. Memorized paper and pencil, assessment would, mostly likely, need to be seen as a relic rather than a refuge. In a learning community, dialog becomes central and listening essential. The way a student explains phenomena and connects conclusions to evidence, speaks several decibels louder to what he understands than a “test” ever could. Tests are contrived and restricted by nature; discourse is authentic and boundless. This shift would also facilitate a recognition of the significance of subject matter. Classroom discourse could help highlight how the subject matter is consequential to student life. Instead of a laundry list of facts, such discussion would elaborate the reasons and meaning inherent in the learning process.
I enjoy the idea that our Pligg discussions could engage others beyond our classroom community. Even though I have been attending or teaching school for the grand majority of my life, I sometimes pause and wonder, “Why the heck are we doing this?” When I worked in an elementary school, I was completely cut-off from the world, outside the school and, many days, even outside of my classroom. Amazing things are done in classrooms everyday, but the field of education seems to suffer from stagnation because hardly any innovations are shared. The blog seems selfish in a way, almost elitist, but I am intrigued by how Pligg decentralizes access to educational content.
The question of RL identity versus virtual identities is really intriguing for me. Like Minh, I , too, asked questions about this concept in a blog, but people didn't respond. I guess maybe Minh and I should get together and try again... I wonder how people can keep their multiple identities straight. Will there ever be a need to have a virtual psychologist for multiple identities??? In some ways I think it might be like wearing multiple hats. To me I relate it to teacher, student, friend, daughter, wife, sister, etc. So far, I've been able to keep myself straight, but I think that my hats are all relatively similar. I have yet to experiment with an online me who might be somewhat different. I wonder if over time, the greater the involvement, the more confusion that can arise??? I'm willing to explore this topic further, as I find it very interesting.
As far as responding in the blog or the pligg site, I agree that the blog allows for formatting, but I don't care for the string of comments. I also like that I can reply to replies in Pligg but have yet to discover how to do that in a blog. I'm still learning about each, but the interactive aspects of Pligg are much more intriguing.