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An Invitation: Join the Summer of Making & Connecting!

In a couple of days it will be June.  Let’s face it, summer is indeed here.  ….That wonderful time of year when the world is in full bloom and ideas percolate.  As the summer suddenly arrives on the doorstep, I have this personal ritual of creating my annual “Summer Manifesto”.  It is a wish list.  I jot down all the various things I want to be able to do over the summer.  The list is usually packed with some pretty ambitious work-related goals (i.e. write that book chapter, grant proposal, etc).  I have some wonderful professional experiences planned (including participation in the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Victoria BC, as well as a special week at UC-Irvine with my Digital Media and Learning Research Hub colleagues as we explore the potential of #connectedlearning in Higher Education).  But my list also includes things much more immediate and personal -(i.e. sit and watch my boys play on the beach as the sun sets, eat a lot of lobster, swim more, etc.)  Each year this list takes on a new hue, and each year my Summer Manifesto tradition always seems to spurn a vitality which then leads to new found creativity.

And in the spirit of creativity, I want to extend a special invitation to everyone:

Please consider joining me in the Making Learning Connected MOOC (a Massive Open On-line Collaboration).  Amaze yourself and inspire others! Be part of the second summer learning party.  Sign ups are now open for “Making Learning Connected” #CLMOOC 2014. @CLMOOC is a collaborative, knowledge-building and sharing experience through Educator Innovator and the National Writing Project.  It is open to anyone interested in making, playing, and learning together.  This year the Kean University Writing Project will facilitate one “Make Cycle” during the #CLMOOC.  We will be encouraging everybody to “Hack Your Writing”.

Take the plunge! summerdive

From June 13th to August 1, 2014 we will play with new tools and processes for making projects, share our results and our learning, and explore the the educational framework known as Connected Learning.  This MOOC is really about you and your interests.  You decide the pace of your activities, the depth of your participation, the scope of your making and learning.  As such, there are no defined time limits to any of the “Make Cycles”. If you are looking for a great way to expand your horizons, reignite your own creativity, and build professional connections, then this is certainly the ticket!

Video created by National Writing Project colleague Kevin Hodgson

 


Approaches to Learning #ocTEL

mud_skippers

Amazing Mud Skippers are Surface Mavens

This week’s core activity on #ocTEL is to evaluate Marton, Hounsell and Entwistle’s approaches to learning framework in the light of one of a choice of four questions.

  • Have you seen any evidence of these different approaches in online contexts, e.g. in technology-enhanced courses you teach? How did these differences manifest themselves in terms of online learning behaviour.
  • Are you leaning towards one approach in particular on ocTEL, and if so why might that be? Perhaps you are employing strategies from more than one approach
  • Are learners who tend to take a ‘surface’ approach likely to learn more or less effectively online versus face-to-face.
  • How might we encourage ‘deep learning’ in online contexts?

This is the framework as stated in the article:

Entwistle_approaches_to_learning

Marton, Hounsell and Entwistle

Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N., (eds.) The Experience of Learning: Implications for teaching and studying in higher education. 3rd (Internet) edition. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh

How might we encourage ‘deep learning’ in online contexts?

I started this by reading and responding to Tim Leonard’s post about this activity on his blog. I hadn’t actually realized that this was “homework” so I guess that qualifies this bit of participation as “deep learning.”  In this case, maybe we can encourage ‘deep learning’ by telling people not to read their course materials or assignments – but if they did what they were told to do, wouldn’t they then be “surface” or “compliance” learners?

I actually like this framework, which I’d prefer to call the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly since I see it as value laden as this question is loaded.

The problem I see lies in the issues identified at the “surface” level learning, and with its by-line cope with course requirements – as if the goal of a swimmer were simply not to drown. In my own classes I see all three types of learners, with most of them apparently at surface, and why shouldn’t they be.  Some few are strategists, and there would probably be more of these had they the skills this requires.  If you ask them, most all would say that their primary objective is to get the highest mark possible in the course and what’s wrong with that anyway. Don’t we value them by their marks, after all?

If I knew I was being valued only for a mark I might go in either direction — become a surface learner feigning disinterest, or a deep learner disdaining assessment. So, there’s something about the directive to “encourage deep learning” that I find grating. If we are talking about student-directed learning, they why am I encouraging any type of learning at all?

From a design perspective, the framework is very useful since it helps me to conceptualize these different kind of learners.  Of course, I’ve seen them all and can even put faces to the patterns but having a neat little three part plan is still quite helpful. As a designer I ought to be mindful of the various approaches that I know students will take (at least three) and try to design for that. I should do something to support surface types, and something to support strategists, and something to support deep learners.

I should also be aware that no one will fit neatly into any of these three little boxes but that people will migrate from one to the other as the course progresses, according to what they find, according to what I and other participants provide, and according to their own changing moods, ideals, understandings and ambitions.

#ocTEL Big and Little Questions

This is our first “assignment” in ocTEL. Simon Hawksey asks us to

reflect on your work experience and ambitions for developing your teaching.

  • Can you identify the most important question about TEL that matters to you?
  • Or alternatively do you have a cluster of issues? Or perhaps you’re ‘just browsing’?

Some people are discussing this here.

The most important question I have about Technology Enhanced Learning is about how technology transforms teaching and learning?   I don’t mean that technology directs or determines change, but I do believe that tools change the way we work and see the world – and I’m defining technology very broadly.

2001 Bone to Space

Technology has always had a transformative impact on human cultures and societies.  I became involved in TEL because I was interested in teaching and learning, not because I was interested in technology, and I’ve continued with it because I have found that it did change the way I saw learning and teaching.

I teach English Second Language in an academic bridge program. Our administrators have always been interested in appearing to be “cutting edge” so they provided us with a minimum amount of support: WiFi connectivity and email for students and faculty, Internet wired classrooms with LED projectors and “SmartBoards” (TM) installed. The stuff has been poorly maintained —  the photo-op is now over — and most regard WiFi as something to keep students busy between classes, but it is there anyway, for anyone to use. I have used it.

One thing I’ve learned from this is that I cannot and should not plan what students will learn and I should not be saying things like “students need” this and that. I’ve learned to provide tools and opportunities and then watch and listen. It’s changed my own practice and helped me become a co-learner with them. Others continue their control culture, deciding what students should do at every step… these are “accountable” and “responsible” teachers, unlike me.

I see it changing students too. It changes the way they interact with one another, how they use the space, how they use the material, how they relate to me. They begin to take possession of all these things, and to self-direct, to a large degree. They co-opt me into their subversive activities, learning whatever they feel they need despite what is handed down to them in the syllabus. They do this without commenting. They are not noticed anyway. They reward me by doing well on their common assessments. I’ve learned that the best way to support their learning is to stay out of the way most of the time. This gives me a lot of time to see who needs extra “help” and then to help them. Usually this just means talking to them, showing some interest, showing some support.

This is totally unlike anything I could have imagined happening. I started out with it just as a way to make it easier to handle classroom management tasks, to free me fro the photocopier, to free them from carrying books and papers, but so much more has happened.

So, now I sit quietly in staff meetings and listen to others talking endlessly about control issues – never about teaching or learning, never about students…

TEL will alienate you too, eject you from your control culture, show you that you are more like your students than you had ever suspected.

Exploring New Metaphors for Education through Design Thinking

As a teacher, participating in this type of research [Design based] gave me the opportunity to work toward solving challenging pedagogical issues in my classroom with collaborators who were experts in the field; it was fantastic professional development for me. As a researcher, I get to see what happens when a promising practice is put into action in a particular context. Everyone wins – students, teachers, and researchers.  -Sarah Hunt-Barron

Last night the Literacy Research Association sponsored their sixth netcast. We focused on formative research and how this translates to the classroom. Two themes kept reoccurring throughout the talk around new metaphors for education.

  • In order to empower teachers we need to consider teaching more of an engineering career.
  • We also using the principles of design thinking, need to rethink the concept of rigor in research.

This new mindset would help transform research and professional development.

Teaching as Engineering Science.

Formative, or design based research does not begin with a question. Instead you start with a goal in mind. Then you develop learning activities, grounded in literature to reach this goal. As you begin the work you take note of factors that enhance and inhibit the goal and enter into a process of iteration. Basically it boils down to, “How can we design something and what can we learn from designing it?”

Education in terms of practice and research benefit when we draw on engineering and a design metaphor. We need to create situations for students to design their won learning and engage in MakerEd. We need to think of our own practices as teachers in terms of a constant iterative practice based on reflection and a goal for the greater good.

Rigor or Vigor?

The panelists also held a wonderful discussion on what should count as rigor in educational research. They discussed the amount of data analysis necessary to do formative experiments well. It involved a constant examination of quantiative and qualitative factors through numerous design cycles. Just like engineers teachers and researchers need to build things and change what does not work.

I found myself on a train during the show so spent more time on Twitter as wifi on Amtrak did not allow me to watch the live. I brought up the idea that maybe rigor does not work as a modifier for research. After all rigor means to be stiff. That does not seem to share principles with iterative design.

Jeremy Lenzi shared a wonderful idea with me. Maybe we need research with vigor and not rigor.

Vigor, mean to life, to be lively, anyone who has spent time doing classroom research knows fidelity can be out of reach beacuse we are talking about lively spaces. The panelists argued that the greater good and the pedagogical goal should drive research. Sounds more like vigor than rigor to me.

Professional Development and Formative Design

Just before the show I also participated in the weekly #edchat on Twitter. We all discussed ways to improve training teachers get once they work in the field. I see many parallels to the panelists talk in terms of improving education through high quality professional development.

Teachers need to design their own professional development. They shoudl create this design cycle around a pedagogical goal. Then over the course of their “learning cycles” teachers can use a process to see whta works to reach that goal and change what is not working.

The goals can from many places. Teachers might have to develop student learning objectives for their evaluation systems. Maybe the teacher and  her building administrator work together to  develop goals after formal observations. Finally teachers might just choose a goal such as improving internet comprehension and seek out opportunities to learn about pedagogy rooted in research.

The design cycle works for professional development. Teachers just need to build iterative design and reflective teaching into everyday practice.

Professional Development Built on Design Thinking

When selecting professional development to attent teachers should make sure opportunities to make, create, break, and iterate are included. There is no need for districts to spend thousands of dollars to see speakers. We have YouTube for that.

Spires & Young (2012) http://www.citejournal.org/articles/v13i4General1Fig2.jpg

Spires & Young (2012) http://www.citejournal.org/articles/v13i4General1Fig2.jpg

Formal professional development should revolve around the design cycle. For example at the New Literacies Institute we build the class around inquiry. Background knowledge is taught before the conference through learning modules. At the conference itself teachers choose a pedagogical goal. Next researchers work with teachers to  identify digital texts and tools that align to that goal. Using these resources participants  create learning activities that should enhance the goal. Finally they bring the project back to the classroom and iterate.

Conclusion

Design thinking has reshaped my vision of education. Every aspect from teacher preperation, to curriculum, professional development, and research needs new models and metaphors. We need to consider design thinking as a guiding principle, an overarching theoretical perspective. As an end result the act of iterative teaching and reflective practice  will then get ensconced in every classroom at every level.

Design Thinking and Education

Many important ideas have bounced around in my head, my writings, and my worlds during the reclaim open initiative.

For those who do not know reclaim open movement (learn more here) seeks to harness the internet so learning occurs as networked events across innovative spaces. When I look across all the conversations happening around reclaim open I coalesce around one common thread: Design Thinking.

Sure open learning involves innovative use of technologies, and  open learning requires a vision  that emphasizes knowledge as  good for the community and not a good to be commidified. Yet after  listening to leaders in the field  I have realized the  transformative power of open learning emerges from  distributed design thinking.

What is Design Thinking?

I am new to this line of inquiry but my nascent reading has pointed me to a history of design thinking that emerged in the fields of architecture and manufacturing. Over time cognitive scientists have (re)desgined many of the ideas. When I translate design thinking into education I borrow heavily from John Chris Jones who put an emphasis on the construct of time:

The main point of difference is that of timing. Both artists and scientists operate on the physical world as it exists in the present (whether it is real or symbolic), while mathematicians operate on abstract relationships that are independent of historical time. Designers, on the other hand, are forever bound to treat as real that which exists only in an imagined future and have to specify ways in which the foreseen thing can be made to exist.

Time. This draws me to the idea of education. In the past we have put so much emphasis on measuring and teaching the past. All this discussion of so-called 21 century skills has made me realize we need to start teaching and assessing for future learning. We need our students discovering solutions to  problems we have yet to realize by using technology that does not exiss. In essence we need to teach a generation of designers.

Design for Teaching

A quick google search as this idea coalesced for me revealed I am not the first one to the design think in education party. In fact the map below from IDEO highlights schools that have made design thinking integral to the curriculum.

Map of design thinking

Teaching as Engineering

My history with examining design in teaching (including stealing the idea for my website tagline) began with my work with David Reinking. Dr. Reinking’s work in literacy research has focused on formative design experiments.  As a fellow with Don Leu’s  New Literacies Research Lab at UCONN we worked closely with David Reinking’s team  to develop learning activities that taught students to read in a learning space that quickly shifted and required each individual reader to construct their own text.

Dr Reinking taught me that engineering, not medical science or agriculture (where many education research paradigms began), serves as the best metaphor for education. We have to start with a pedagogical goal and then identify factors that enhance or inhibit that pedagogical goal.

Teaching as Open

Design thinking not only supports open education but also requires a commitment to open education. I call this the engineering effect. The more we iterate as a community the more we will discover which will lead to even greater iterations and discoveries.

So many scholars  have committed to open learning and this pushes design thinking in education. You have the work of Henry Jenkins, danah boyd, Mimi Ito, Mitch Resnick, John Seely Brown, John Greeno, Howard Rheingold, and Daniel Hickey (to name a few in no particular order) that have helped shaped our belief in open learning.

Teachers have also committed to supporting design thinking by pursuing  open learning. My Twitter feed overflows with ideas from people such as Paul Allison, Kevin Hodgson, Jerry Blumengarten, Starr Sackstein, Ian O’Byrne, and Karen Fasimpaur. In all honestly I could never list all the teachers who regularly think, lead, fail, and learn in the open.

Design For Learning

I debated delineating design for teaching and design for learning. Teaching and learning are inextricably connected. I decided to make the distinction because we learn without teaching and too often teach without learning. I also think we need a consorted effort to design for future learning. This must resonate in our both our  instructional  and curriculum design practice.

Instructional Design

In order to create learning that support design thinking we will have to consider spaces that put an emphasis not so much on targets or skill sets but on the learners. We will need an instructional design that focus on civic problems, engagement, motivation, and of course learning. Creating events that support future learning will be critical. We have come a long way since Gagne.

Backward  Design

Similar efforts to support design thinking have also translated into classroom practice. I see evidence of this phenomenon in the rise of Wiggin’s ideas of backward design where curriculum tries to emphasize understanding over the skills and the content knowledge. There is much debate as to what we should emphasize skills or content knowledge. I believe we ask  the wrong the question. Instead we need to know what pathways get students to deeper learning.

Design for Meaning

Meaning making has always involved the remixing of others ideas. In fact the Greeks originally coined the idea of analysis, literally loosening up, and synthesis, or putting together. In other words “close reading” and “analytical writing” have always involved a bricolage of thinking. The Internet has amplified the speed and reach of these (re)designs of meaning and we see this in the texts we read, the stories we tell, and the languages that emerge.

Design and Text Assembly

As part of my dissertation I spent thousands of hours watching videos of students read online. One of the fundamental characteristics of successful students was engaging in what I called strategic text assembly. These students combined comprehension monitoring strategies and navigational skills to create and read texts that had never existed before. They chose reading pathways that helped them to overcome a lack of background knowledge. They seemed prepared for future learning.

Design and Multimodal Authorship

The signs and symbol systems we use to make meaning have shifted back to the visual, back to the spoken word. The dominance of text, while still the backbone of the Internet, has faded as more traditional non-verbocentric practices have reclaimed a strong position in meaning making. As researchers and educators we need to understand how meaning making when we engage in transmedia and transliteracies practices.

Design and Web Literacies

I am glad all the early talk of Web 2.0, the read/write web, and WYSIWYG editors has faded to the background. I am glad to see such a focus on teaching students computational thinking and coding. We will need cadres of learners who can speak in the language of the web.

Distributed Design Thinking

You do not need to know how to code to be a designer and not all coders,  engage in design thinking. The same reads true for educators. That is my other take away from the reclaim open movement. You can not do design thinking or open education alone.

The issues we face as researchers and educators are too big. The problems too complex. If students are to imagine a future and create things that yet to exist we need to encourage real-time problem solving and emergent literacies in collaborative teams. You can be the idea guy, the coder, the artistic designer. The role really does not matter. As long as students, and us in general, have a shared vision and are willing to reach that goal through multiple pathways of knowledge we will support design thinking in education.

Community: The Only Path to Open Education

This past week I helped all of us celebrate Open Education Week. I joined Teachers Talking Teachers, participated in the Mozilla webmaker challenges, joined the Teacher badges Alliance, and engaged with many of you on social media.

I am left with one overarching theme. You cannot have Open Ed without community. You cannot have open web standards without community. You cannot have Open Educational Resources without community.

In many ways you cannot have education without community.

Community of  Writers

CC 3.0 UX Designs as Communities of Practice. murdocke23. flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/murdocke/7356625068

I first celebrated Open Ed by lurking, possibly even trolling, during the ConnectLearning.tv event on #DS106. For those who do not know #DS106 is an open format class on digital storytelling. It exists mainly because a community emerged around a digital hub and then spread like weeds through different social networks.

I stress the role of community for my teacher candidates when we discuss the teaching of writing. I explain that the best writing spaces I have seen  have a shared vision, experts and novices, and recognized practices that support developing writers.

The same holds true for Open Learning and Open Educational Resources. One of the greatest writing projects I contributed to this year (and only on the peripheral) was the development of Mozilla’s Web Literacy standards. The initiative, lead by Doug Belshaw, not only epitomizes how open ed works but resulted in the best thinking designed to prepare online research and media skills.

Community Necessary for Assessment

Community: The Only Path to Open Education

CC 2.0 Badges and Assessment. DML Competition. Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmlcomp/4980762084/sizes/m/

I realized among all the talk of assessment and badging during the Teachers Badges Network Hangout on Air that community needs to come before competencies. Christina Cantrill, of the National Writing Project, stressed this point over and over again.

Badging will never be about rigor. Badging is about relevance. There has to be a community around a specific credentialing system in order for badging to succeed. This community would then help to establish skill trees. They might decide what constitutes the criteria and  evidence  for a badge.

Plus, maybe most importantly, a community would recognize the value of a badge once it has been awarded.

Community Necessary in the Workforce

Community: The Only Path to Open Education

Those that understand the role of community will have marketable skills. Gina Trapani, an open source advocate and co-founder of Think -Up recently commented on the importance of community on the latest episode of TWIG. She stated that in looking for potential employers and mentees that being a developer goes beyond coding.

Gina, noted that most importantly Think-Up looks for those who understand how different communities work. Only then can they provide insights to users. She also noted that developers need to break from the mindset that you need to know code. Instead the act of developing, takes quality writers, designers, and thinkers. As someone who quit coding in 1989 when I was in 6th grade, this idea resonated with me. We need emergent leaders and thinkers who work collaboratively if we want students to be college and career ready.

So What is Open Ed?

I wonder if I am any closer to answering this question than when I was a week ago.  I have learned while playing in so many new spaces this week that Open Ed, if not a set of principles, is a shared mindset that cuts across so many different communities.

I want my students to learn in the open. I want to model what it means to think, fail, and reflect in the open. I want to try and use OER in my teaching. Maybe, just maybe, I am contributing a little back to the Open Ed community.


 

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