Interregnum

Interregnum, that period between Kings, normal laws are not adhered to, it is a time to renew, to experience chaos, risk and possibility. Excited by what I learned and eager to apply it, I'm revising my teaching strategies and going after a new iteration of a learning environment: a connected, hybrid, student centric, project based version. I'm thinking about the paradigm shift from consumption to production, form scarcity to abundance. In terms of a learning environment, it must be a place that inspires creativity, of authentic production, playful and urgent making. This vision aligns me with the Maker movement. I see many opportunities for a convergence of a maker space that includes the visual and performing arts. Virtualizing this experience has the potential to connect the space with other, similar spaces globally.

Including the arts in a maker space values the creative spirit, inspiring and supporting deeper conversations and collaborations. This is the pathway to STEM immersion and enchantment for learner's not usually attracted or proficient in STEM fields. I toy with the vision of a learner directed performance maker space. In what ways could it be structured by connections? What opportunities would an augmented component play, a middle earth, to share between physical spaces?
What elements would be necessary? How does the ecosystem function? Is there a financial component that contributes to the systems' sustainability?

Journalism is the essential curriculum for the 21st Century? Take a look at GoKicker and tell me what you think. Writing is essential, well, multiple means of expression are essential. Writing has a unique place. But what is now defined as 'journalism' is in flux and multi modal. Absolutely, journalism is an esssentail component of a diverse makerspace. But really, as the essentail curriculum, no. Ecoliteracy is, as it includes our part in the larger systems. All of which seems to be news of course!

Open or Closed?

#oped12 In the MOOC, getting into the Open.MOOC.ca, I am just beginning my Masters of Education and I am new to being a 'researcher.' It is not that I haven't always done research.  In the f2f courses I am taking we are encouraged to use ERIC. It can only be fully accessed through our library, with a login. Of course the articles I wanted to access have 'limited availability', something about inadvertently giving away authors social security numbers or something. I’m thinking about the use of restricted non open sourced peer reviewed material as a basis for scholarship.  If it is behind a money or status firewall is it a legitimate repository for information?  Or is it in fact biased for just this reason, out of date and incomplete or accessible only to fee paying institutions?  Why does an author choose to do that with their work when we have creative commons?  I understand the issue of intellectual property and the need to keep confidence, but in the interchange of ideas, limiting diversity and access, limits the insights.  Do we have time to wait? Melting arctic ice suggests, no.

A discussion of open educational resources must also consider equitable access.  A closed system is exactly what we have had in academia since the middle ages. It is more of a cultural firewall than a real one. But why open up everything? My own theories are driven by the thought that somewhere out there someone will have a great innovation that changes everything. Perhaps it is Tellihard de Chardin echoing the world brain, the noosphere. Actually, that’s it! That is why we need to open up learning resources that we have sequestered behind walls for so many years.  Group thinking is emerging, connectivism mimics this brain activity. If we don’t open it to everyone we miss nodes, synapses, serendipity.

Serious Gaming

maybe I'm just not funsy wunsy enough.  A recent post about Bill Gates prediction in eSchool News about Gaming got me thinking. I always hated games. I was terrible at them in school. I always lost, couldn't compete, didn't get it, was the last one chosen. I still don't know which shape of pig skinned object they use in Basketball, or football. Yeah, one of those. On the other hand, I love Second Life--a serious game. No winning, no losing, no points, no score, no beginning, no end, no price for admission, no sell outs, no devastated cities with acres of parking lots for tailgating.  So we are going to gamify education? I'd venture the opinion there isn't much time for games. Let's not gamify education--indvidualize it, energize it, transform it.  Sure, games can have their place.  Things are going fast.  Funny that gaming is aligned with the Common Core standards movement. Like sugar. Sweeten you up and put the medicine down your throat. We saw the movies about WWII, if you don't know who won the playoffs you were a commie. That was then, --good thing I was not around for that one--we have entered a new aeon: post 2007. Things have changed. It is the diversity of opinion, experience, background, ideas, visions, perspectives, culture, language, belief that matters for us to survive and prosper in a new inter connected ecologically challenged world. Homogenious thinking ends in extinction. If you don't believe in evolution you won't. I agree, learning should be fun, but its not a game. We continue to infantize our youth.  There is so much work to be done. Wouldn't it be better to be productive? people are out of work because we have surrendered our ability to sustain oursleves to corporations. We let 'them' grow our food, produce our power, print our money, define health, make our decisions.

Sterling College, Vermont, an example of Place Based Education

We have entered the paradigm shift in earnest. I see two radically divergent branches in educaion crystalizing-- Common Core (GME--Genetically Modified Education) and what I might call, opt out or Maker Faire. It is no accident that Bill Gates supports Monsanto in one breath and the Common Core Standards in the next--they are the same vision-- a destruction of diverstiy and the marketing of sustenance; the hubris that humans can do it better than nature and the capitalization of life. We confuse the ability to create wealth with intelligence. I have no arument with the fact that education must change--but not from one factory to another.

I am all aboard the change train in education. But we must consider and be comfortable with chaos, with complexity--with the paradox of place based learning and global awareness and connectedness--hyper glocal. If we lose our connection to the earth we are lost.  I have a hunch that there is an inherent ethos in connectivism that is found in deep ecology. "Deep ecology argues that the natural world is a subtle balance of complex inter-relationships in which the existence of organisms are dependent on the existence of others within ecosystems."

danielmirante.com (account suspended, retrived from Google search images for Deep Ecology)

Flipping Assessment

I'm still flipping out with this metaphor. Partially its ironic because as a society we suffer from inversion. Even more than Plato's cave allegory, reality seems inverted in many ways. Flipping is a way of revealing this. I was thinking about this in terms of cheating on tests and how to detect it following up on an earlier entry on Stealth Assessment and Authentic Testing. In an unambiguous discipline where there is one right answer, perhaps it is easy to show you know the answer by cheating.  

In terms of motivating a student to learn, it is giving responsibility and creating an environment that has real world implications to their actions.  Their actions are a demonstration of their competency.  It is impossible to cheat. Knowledge is agile, not simply a competency. It results in action.  If you can authenticate that action there is no ambiguity.

As well as reversing the expectation of a test on a given date and time, a flipped assessment is stretched out, on going. The idea is assessment is more like a story revealing itself over time. The student is the author. A test can be too narrow, a missed opportunity to have us take ownership of our stories. The 'test' is not given by a teacher, but rather the role is to facilitate the student to self assess and create their stories. The process of life long learning is told in a collection of digital stories.

I flip the assessment in another way too; on myself, the assessor. I can see in the 'product' its quality and the growth that has occurred. I could do a better job. Its a situation of continuous improvement.  As a teacher, a facilitator, I have so much to learn.  I am my hardest critic, just like my students.

Flipping Assessment

I'm still flipping out with this metaphor. Partially its ironic because as a society we suffer from inversion. Even more than Plato's cave allegory, reality seems inverted in many ways. Flipping is a way of revealing this. I was thinking about this in terms of cheating on tests and how to detect it following up on an earlier entry on Stealth Assessment and Authentic Testing. In an unambiguous discipline where there is one right answer, perhaps it is easy to show you know the answer by cheating.  

In terms of motivating a student to learn, it is giving responsibility and creating an environment that has real world implications to their actions.  Their actions are a demonstration of their competency.  It is impossible to cheat. Knowledge is agile, not simply a competency. It results in action.  If you can authenticate that action there is no ambiguity.

As well as reversing the expectation of a test on a given date and time, a flipped assessment is stretched out, on going. The idea is assessment is more like a story revealing itself over time. The student is the author. A test can be too narrow, a missed opportunity to have us take ownership of our stories. The 'test' is not given by a teacher, but rather the role is to facilitate the student to self assess and create their stories. The process of life long learning is told in a collection of digital stories.

I flip the assessment in another way too; on myself, the assessor. I can see in the 'product' its quality and the growth that has occurred. I could do a better job. Its a situation of continuous improvement.  As a teacher, a facilitator, I have so much to learn.  I am my hardest critic, just like my students.

Flipping the Facility: Blended Learning in a Web 2.0 Classroom

I am very excited by the idea of flipping. The last 2 posts look at this in a way that takes it far from watching a video for homework.  The idea of a "Flipped Facility" is an attempt to communicate what is unique about my classroom in hopes of inspiring others and learning from my PLN how to deepen the experience and my own teaching and learning.

I think about my facility as flipped in the sense that the students have responsibility for the product and content that emerges from it.   I point out that it is a facility to show how our classroom is interconnected in a building and its related systems.  It is a web2.0 classroom because it is based on student created content.  There are faculty and programmatic structures in place-- but the learning activity is the production of content created from a student community --through design, productions, and media.  When I created my program, I envisioned a transformed learning community and encouraged the components that nurtured community and collaboration.   The facility would be a 100% student operated facility, including: a stage, the Box Office, costume shop, scene shop, videostudio, a recording studio--  Students take responsible, meaningful roles such as: Stagehands, Actors, Musicians, Technical Directors, Production Managers, Stage Managers, Designers, Directors, Dancers, Choreographers, Master Electricians, Master Carpenters, Master Sound, Master Props and Master Video, Costumer, etc. They do it all.  

Creativity and Innovation come from collaboration--NOT competition. Here is a picrture of the production cast and crew, along with the hosting crew from a visiting college production. Student Centric!

Giving students the responsibility of the various positions helps them take ownership and commit themselves.  This collaborative and cooperative team structure is one of reciprocal apprenticeships.  It creates Department Heads (Masters), Assistant Department Heads and crew in each area.  The teacher in all of us emerges in this scenario.  I am inspired by the Barefoot College  where their model is to find the teacher in everyone.  The apprenticeship and peer to peer model values the contributions of the newcomers as much as the students further

along.  As students take more ownership with their position and responsibilities they passionately dig into the subject area. The learning objective is to have the students become self directed learners following their passions.

In a design based, productivity focused learning environment, students are incredibly creative and highly productive.  They must collaborate in a high stress, constantly changing, diverse and technology saturated environment.  They create tangible, measurable and assessable events and artifacts that, over time, give full testimony to their talents, interests and growth.  It’s often messy, overtly dramatic; there is a tremendous amount of growing up going on--and not.  This is the part where the culture of the students, creates the learning environment --and you have to learn how to collaborate within it.

 

 

 

Flipping the Facility: Blended Learning in a Web 2.0 Classroom

I am very excited by the idea of flipping. The last 2 posts look at this in a way that takes it far from watching a video for homework.  The idea of a "Flipped Facility" is an attempt to communicate what is unique about my classroom in hopes of inspiring others and learning from my PLN how to deepen the experience and my own teaching and learning.

I think about my facility as flipped in the sense that the students have responsibility for the product and content that emerges from it.   I point out that it is a facility to show how our classroom is interconnected in a building and its related systems.  It is a web2.0 classroom because it is based on student created content.  There are faculty and programmatic structures in place-- but the learning activity is the production of content created from a student community --through design, productions, and media.  When I created my program, I envisioned a transformed learning community and encouraged the components that nurtured community and collaboration.   The facility would be a 100% student operated facility, including: a stage, the Box Office, costume shop, scene shop, videostudio, a recording studio--  Students take responsible, meaningful roles such as: Stagehands, Actors, Musicians, Technical Directors, Production Managers, Stage Managers, Designers, Directors, Dancers, Choreographers, Master Electricians, Master Carpenters, Master Sound, Master Props and Master Video, Costumer, etc. They do it all.  

Creativity and Innovation come from collaboration--NOT competition. Here is a picrture of the production cast and crew, along with the hosting crew from a visiting college production. Student Centric!

Giving students the responsibility of the various positions helps them take ownership and commit themselves.  This collaborative and cooperative team structure is one of reciprocal apprenticeships.  It creates Department Heads (Masters), Assistant Department Heads and crew in each area.  The teacher in all of us emerges in this scenario.  I am inspired by the Barefoot College  where their model is to find the teacher in everyone.  The apprenticeship and peer to peer model values the contributions of the newcomers as much as the students further

along.  As students take more ownership with their position and responsibilities they passionately dig into the subject area. The learning objective is to have the students become self directed learners following their passions.

In a design based, productivity focused learning environment, students are incredibly creative and highly productive.  They must collaborate in a high stress, constantly changing, diverse and technology saturated environment.  They create tangible, measurable and assessable events and artifacts that, over time, give full testimony to their talents, interests and growth.  It’s often messy, overtly dramatic; there is a tremendous amount of growing up going on--and not.  This is the part where the culture of the students, creates the learning environment --and you have to learn how to collaborate within it.