Saturday, April 9, 2016

Transmedia Literacy and the Wicked Problem of Tech Integration Part 4

Stepping Back from Tech


“In the midst of a fabulous array of an historically unprecedented and utterly mind-boggling stimuli…   

whatever.” - Thomas de Zengotita
Tech often gets associated with fostering attention deficits, a distractedness blocking deep learning.  For that reason, stepping back from the tech, and moving slowly through mechanics of thought necessary to use these tools effectively, could make our classrooms more productive learning spaces at the same time.  Using technology as a pedagogical mirror causes a reflection on how we utilize our classroom space as learning tool.  Just as tech tools potentially affect how we learn and interact, space with purpose becomes a “third teacher”.  Here are some classroom tweaks, manipulations that support a collaborative learning culture, where the process of learning is a visible, manipulative process.  


Walls with Cognitive Purpose

Move all furniture away from the walls, make them approachable and use whatever manipulative materials are available (tape, chart paper, post-its, wipe boards, windows, etc…).  Use wall space with purpose, each wall, assuming one wall is windowed, for a different kind of cognition - acquisition wall where teachers post content, processing wall where students process, and the “life” wall where learning transfers into the real world.  Space takes on a cognitive purpose and provides a point for classroom ritual.  The teacher presents material here and this pattern of thinking surrounds this space.  Here is where I work out my thinking…  Meaningful wall space for habits of mind coupled with a reflection on why we group together within the walls begins to construct a reason for school, the culture of learning within.

Metaphors of Human Interaction

Why do we even gather in schools if we could access content online and interact digitally?  Thornberg offers the four classroom metaphors based on human interactions - campfire for whole group storytelling (or mini-lesson) time, watering holes for small group interactions, caves for solo-encapsulation time, and mountain tops where learning goes out into the real world.  As mentioned above, patterns of expected behaviors in the classroom create rituals, it also communicates how we validate learning process as both social event and internal process, and how learning is to be transferred into actionable knowledge in the world.  We need to interact in the same physical space where prosody, affect, and gesture are 360 degree all encompassing experiences.  Luma Institute, the d.School, and Expeditionary Learning’s Ron Berger offer explicit critique models for modeling these interactions (see reference links).  If we define the rituals within the space itself, and establish the forms of interaction, we are left with the question of how we think together?


Making Learning Visible

Warning:  Repetitive thinking moves, applicable to a wide range of content to use on the wall space, foments patterns of thought within the group.  Edu-culture has a bad habit of crossing from culture into cult, often propagated by educorporate objectives, including our teacher trainer centers within universities.  A good test of the intentions behind a “program” is the amount of content and training offered as open source.  Another rule of thumb is to never let the proscribed thinking moves overshadow natural thinking moves that recur within a learning community.  When this happens, name them, encourage them, and make them habit.  The goal is for students and groups to evolve their own patterns of thought.  This means overarching dispositions promoted by a school’s mission statement are critically important.  Mindsets within these arches should be openly discussed, methods reflecting this consensus.  Too often one teacher’s method gets attacked as conflicting with the way things are done when a macro lens would show alignment with dispositions and mindsets.  If prompts to students are only producing regurgitation of content or a pre-scripted process of thought, then perhaps it is time to try something more provocative.
Beyond the warning, having a few explicit examples to repeat throughout the year makes visible thinking on the wall explicit.  Some examples from Project Zero are great starting points…  see, think, wonder - circle of viewpoints - compass points - color, symbol, image - I used to think, now I think.  Agency by Design has developed others particular to maker spaces such as parts, purposes, complexities.  Design Thinking offers collective brainstorming and affinity grouping methods for quick crowdsourced data sets, inquiry, and ideation - all methods identifying the complexity of divergent viewpoints within a group, and moving forward into convergent goals.  Games for Actors and Nonactors from Boal is loaded with provocative participatory theater games to proceed thinking critically around content, excellent for pre-writing.
Awareness of thinking process should be visual, on wall space, with clear cues to the mindsets and methods surrounding each step.  This culture of thinking within a school, made explicit on interactive wall space, validates both individual and collaborative experiences, and prepares for thinking in shared digital spaces.

Reflect the Tech

Tech tools often afford meaningful insights into pedagogy not emphasized in the classroom such as collaborative learning, socratic dialogue, movie assembly, connecting sensory media and text, and processing through sketchnoting or doddling.  Stepping back from the tech, slowing down the action, and focusing on these process in analogue space creates a cognitive bridge between the two spaces.  Here are __ simple moves.
  • Google Docs commenting function performed with printouts of text on the wall with highlighters, sharpies, and post-its brings the mechanics of Docs into a physical manipulative space and opens up the space for “comment critique”.  
  • Chart paper and post-its on wall space or tables enables a silent, slow-motion socratic dialogue where students can visualize the threads of their conversations in shared space, before moving to a interactive board space (Murally, Padlet, Realtimeboard).  
  • Storyboarding in physical space before video editing opens up critique space for multiple video and audio tracks and ideal for bridging back and forth between writing space and media creation.  
  • Bringing images and screenshots into physical space as a focal point for deeper thinking critique counters the “swiping” habit associated with digital image.  
  • Sketchnoting and doodling on wall space validates a visual form of processing and for most students yields higher recall.


Stepping forward

After 15 years, we stop saying 21st Century Learning.  When Google’s AlphaGo beat one of the world’s leading Go players, the program ran off of a basic laptop, questioning the importance of the brute computational force of Moore’s Law.  What I think this means for tech integration is, we don’t have to wait for the next greatest all powerful personalized learning device, we have to focus on better integration of the software we have, creating deeper learning experiences.  What that means for educational tech designers is better merging of the affordances of our current patchwork of applications to create “personal” learning experiences enabling  individual and group appropriation, not the “personalized learning” our closed environment learning management systems promise.  In this reorganization of tools there could be a wider balance of multimodal inputs, incorporating a broader cognitive architecture.  Google Wave hinted at this merging of tools for group communication across time and space - a multimodal version of what Dr. Aaron Kuntz described in the Disruptive Dialogue Project with discussion threads branching off vertically and horizontally.  Imagine a Google Docs space as a transmedia experience, sketchnoting, audio, video inputs all part of the writing experience.
Beyond the curating of our current tools, two of the next advances on the immediate horizon that could drastically change our learning environments are virtual reality, text to speech technology, and personal learning assistants.  
When taking a virtual field trip to far corners of the world is as simple as putting on a 3D headset then we should perhaps have some strategies for how to frontload cognition before the event, and how to reflect on an experiential learning experience after.  The question will not be who has access to the devices, but who has access to the pedagogy.  The place to practice for this, taking a real field trip.
Speech to text advances could change the way we approach writing, our creative impulses more dependent on our “centaur” bonding with the devices.  Imagine students audio journaling a walk through a forest, senses honed, then curating their thoughts to report observations - or skimming the transcriptions of a critical discussion for selections to sprout the next inquiry - or as Psychologist and Learning Specialist Maria Jose Serpa just showed me, using voice to text technology to move a student from sketching a written draft, reading it into the iPad, then editing, revising the document into a final draft.
The future of technology in education is not in chasing the latest device but In using tech in deeper learning environments.  It should be noted the incredible potentials of bridging transmedia/transcoding literacies in maker space, gamification, game based learning, STEM/STEAM environments, participator theater, and forms of experiential learning.

Interstices Within

The structural variables of tech and learning space are often the easy answer investments for institutions.  They look great on the school tour and photograph well for publications.  The process variables reflect the human centered design of learning, what kind of interactions are happening within the walls.  Changing human behaviors can be like changing the course of a river.  Pedagogical shift is slow.  But learning space design and tech tools serve as catalysts for this change if their purpose is made explicit and is aligned with the culture of thought within the school.  
Text is vital for civilization but our tech integration can bridge multiple symbolic forms in sensory medias with our language development making us not post-human, but more human.  But advances in technology do carry the false hope that humanity is on a continuous improvement plan.  Continuous human centered innovation needs a dispersed learning network, a completely decentralized agile approach that conflicts with the current hierarchical, educorporate structure that resembles Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika.  The hope is in connectivity and transparency, in our ability to document and share the incredible learning processes happening every day.  These lenses will reveal the interstices within the edifice, the seeds which spread the roots, which, networked and intertwined overcome the host.

Postnote: Beware not blogging or only sketching out notes here and there.  Then, when you do try to write, it is all bottlenecked and comes out not as blog but as manifesto.  Excuse the melodrama.  Pretty much everything here can be expanded out into further posts.  Everything I write about is anecdotal, meaning from real classroom practical observation.  If I touched on anything that you also have experience with and are passionate about I’d love to hear from you.  Or if you have references to related readings, please share. The more we break down the silos, the more we can exchange and create moments when we sit back in awe of our students… (this audio was one take)
see part I
part II
part III
References

Alba, D. (2015, April). 50 Years On, Moore’s Law Still Pushes Tech to Double Down. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from http://www.wired.com/2015/04/50-years-moores-law-still-pushes-tech-double/

Boal, A. (1985). Theatre of the oppressed. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

Boal, A. (1992). Games for actors and non-actors. London: Routledge.

Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning ... (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2016, from http://tcpd.org/thornburg/Handouts/Campfires.pdf

Davis, C. (2014). Reflection, Conversation, and Socratic Spaces. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/reflection-conversation-and-socratic-spaces-chris-davis

Davis, C., Lopez, D., & Leon, N. (2014). Interview with Dr. Aaron Kuntz. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWXkEUiYX8Q

Davis, C. (2015). Classroom Design with Eoin Lenihan. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OqhkdGmcjw

Davis, C. (2015). Teaching #rosethornbud as analog @googledocs - "process" wall #mlv #mtv @EoinLenihan @LUMAInstitute #futureedchat pic.twitter.com/4al2RTrPnC. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://twitter.com/chrisdaviscng/status/655431698356772864

Davis, C., Peterson, N., Hertz, J., Pall, N., Lopez, D., & Levinson, A. (2015). 2015 08 26 Journeys in Podcasting with Natasha Peterson. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRHjt5f5uQc

Davis, C., & Lopez, D. (2016, February). Stephen Downes on Open Networks, Agile Systems, and Edu Cult 2. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://youtu.be/9QOldb-3xZI

Davis, C. (2016, April 06). Handshake dance cheer. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bz3UkiOMAo

Doorley, S., & Witthoft, S. (2012). Make space: How to set the stage for creative collaboration. Wiley.

Downes, S. (2016, February). Personal and Personalized Learning. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from http://www.downes.ca/post/65065

Flanigan, L. (2015, January). How Improv Can Open Up the Mind to Learning in the Classroom and Beyond. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/01/30/how-improv-can-open-up-the-mind-to-learning-in-the-classroom-and-beyond/

 International Society for Technology in Education. (n.d.). DRAFT 1 - 2016 ISTE Standards for Students. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qPWppmNVJXeOrguvkrQA_KWHkUMWozIwL326kn6yHyo/edit

K12Lab. (n.d.). Improv activities for Design Thinking. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from https://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/3091c/Improv_activities_for_Design_Thinking.html

Kelley, T., & Littman, J. (2001). The art of innovation: Lessons in creativity from IDEO, America's leading design firm. New York: Currency/Doubleday.

Maeda, J., & Bermont, B. (2011). Redesigning leadership. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Making the Most of Non-Fixed Classroom Architecture. (2015, June 23). Retrieved April 08, 2016, from http://eoinlenihan.weebly.com/blog/making-the-most-of-non-fixed-classroom-architecture

P. (2009). Michael Wesch - PdF2009 - The Machine is (Changing) Us. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6eMdMZezAQ

Proulx, M. J., Todorov, O. S., Aiken, A. T., & De Sousa, A. A. (2016, February). Where am I? Who am I? The Relation Between Spatial Cognition, Social Cognition and Individual Differences in the Built Environment. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00064/full

Stearns, J. (2016, March 28). What Improv Can Teach Us About Innovation and Community Engagement. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from https://medium.com/@jcstearns/what-improv-can-teach-us-about-innovation-and-community-engagement-500a6e7e5480#.xuahvnedz

The future of computing. (2016). Retrieved April 08, 2016, from http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21694528-era-predictable-improvement-computer-hardware-ending-what-comes-next-future?vh=c54724fb6bd4aa6f0de538712fdd664e538636af

F. (2010). Thomas de Zengotita: Dilemma of authenticity. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFBnJlazG3M

Tobias, S., & Duffy, T. M. (2009). Constructivist instruction: Success or failure? New York: Routledge.

Using Classroom Walls to Create a Thinking-Rich Environment. (n.d.). Retrieved April 08, 2016, from 
http://eoinlenihan.weebly.com/blog/using-classroom-walls-to-create-a-thinking-rich-environment#_ftn1

 E. (2009). What is Google Wave? Retrieved April 10, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo
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Transmedia Literacy and the Wicked Problem of Tech Integration Part 3

Pedagogical Shift:  What needs to be done?

The Bolsheviks had incredible titles for their revolutionary literature - What is to be Done?  Who is to Blame?  The topic of pedagogical shift is as massive and bloated as a Tsarist regime, especially for a generation of teachers who have been trained to implement programs, not reflect on epistemology and cognitive processing.  But if we change the toolset in a learning environment, and we truly reflect on what the tools afford, this potentially changes how we organize learning.  This list by no means encompasses the whole of the change, but it might provide some starting points for debate.

Learning is a social construction.  

Critical discussion drives learning and leverages students into defensible positions, creating a need to dig in and search for reasons for an argument.  Common group goals for students to work towards place students in an environment where they must empathize with the abilities and needs of peers.  The balance between respecting the drive within each individual but with an understanding that the support of the learning community is necessary to realize one’s potential.  The Doc is the tool providing the space for both personal encapsulation and social interaction.  Writing is one of the most difficult tasks we ask of elementary school students and yet students often face the blank slate without cognitive front loading.  Instead of treating the writing task as a unit of production, it should serve as the “talking piece”.


Break down the barrier of the time-production unit.  

There is plenty written about our Prussian school model being outdated, a robust design that is still with us today.  Chronemics is the study of how we use time to communicate.  The Industrial Revolution introduced a monochronic system in which time was broken into production units serving the efficiency of factories.  In this post-Gutenberg era we are regaining some of the communicative strengths of pre-Gutenberg culture, or adopting elements from cultures that never placed text above oral culture.  But working from the strengths of these polychronic time communicative systems we create a less fragile system more adaptable to change, innovation, and creativity.  Here goals and results are prioritized over schedules and deadlines.  Concentration is on an event, not on individual tasks.  In project settings this moves the focus to framing objectives around a driving question, not on the successful completion of a series of assignments.  People and relationships take precedence over job and results.  Google Docs provides this ability to “check-in” on progress without there being an explicit timed-production-assessment system.  Active documents are never really finished, there can always be another interaction, more continuity between tasks.  With group editors using critique models, there is a social learning net of support as opposed to graded feedback for every assignment.  We regain a more human-centered approach to learning, and more space for a personalized learning experience.



Authorship is not dependent on pure internal processing.  

In real life, we work from the vantage point of our strengths and knowing our areas of weakness, we go for help from others.  In writing, this metacognition of ability should be validated.  John Seely Brown talks about situated learning environments in which students observe by “legitimate peripheral participation” as cognitive apprentices.  Surfers learn how to surf by watching other surfers, by talking through the process in “hero narratives”.  Musicians learn to play by hours of observation, by being in proximity with other musicians.  Writing should also be socially active in a community of writers, while teachers should actively model writing and the “think aloud” narrative while writing.

Text and sensory media co-exist in creative writing.  

Role playing critical problems through participatory theater, organizing stories graphically, using imagery to discover multiple perspectives, and using film clips or virtual reality “trips” to spark ideas.  Using both the active critique of mediums but also the creative sprint in these mediums to organize thought for writing.   I recently watched a fifth grade student put together a well choreographed fight scene from his fantasy fiction writing.  The scene occupied only two sentences from his text, the perfect opportunity to film the scene, then revisit the writing and capture some of its complexity.  There are endless connections between writing and other symbolic forms.  Just because Google Docs is a text tool doesn’t mean the teaching and learning must revolve around the symbolic form of that tool.  Going back to Activity Theory model, it is the employment of multiple tools that create rich learning environments.  The metaphoric play between symbolic forms creates the deeper experience.  


 

Learning is not something that happens to the learner.  

Much of our learning design places the learner in a passive role and limits the trajectory and scope of the learning outcome.  Think of Math Blasters versus Minecraft.  There’s not much freedom within the game mechanics of the former and the latter, especially in creative mode, leaves creative space, the possibilities for constructive narrative endlessly complex.  Project design talks about voice and choice.  This is not only a motivational feature but a necessary catalyst for agency of learning.  Creation technologies such as Docs, Murally, Explain Everything, iMovie, iMotion, Veescope, Scratch, Book Creator, and GarageBand leave the learner to experience the process of moving between divergent and convergent thinking.  These tools within project learning models help leave leave learning goals open.

 see part I
part II
part IV

 References

Brown, J. S. (n.d.). Learning in the Digital Age. Retrieved April 8, 2016, from http://www.johnseelybrown.com/learning_in_digital_age-aspen.pdf

 Buchloh, B. H. (1992). From Faktura to Photography. In R. Bolton (Ed.), The Contest of Meaning (pp. 49-87). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Calkins, L. (1983). Lessons from a child: On the teaching and learning of writing. Exeter, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

Chronemics. (n.d.). Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronemics
Davis, C. (2014). Reflection, Conversation, and Socratic Spaces. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/reflection-conversation-and-socratic-spaces-chris-davis

Davis, C. (2015). Cognitive apprenticeship and the critical narratives surrounding learning #dtk12chat #edchat #sxswedu @jseelybrown pic.twitter.com/KCWq6VRD4H. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://twitter.com/chrisdaviscng/status/658114004498432001

Davis, C., Peterson, N., Hertz, J., Pall, N., Lopez, D., & Levinson, A. (2015). 2015 08 26 Journeys in Podcasting with Natasha Peterson. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRHjt5f5uQc

Davis, C. (2016, March). Sxsw Theater Jennifer Luck And Brent Hasty Theater Mindpop. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://soundcloud.com/journeys-in-podcasting-podcasting/sxsw-theater-jennifer-luck-and-brent-hasty-theater-mindpop

Davis, C. (2016, March). Sxswedu Theater Of The Oppressed. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://soundcloud.com/journeys-in-podcasting-podcasting/sxswedu-theater-of-the-oppressed

Hallermann, S., Larmer, J., & Mergendoller, J. R. (2011). PBL in the elementary grades: Step-by-step guidance, tools and tips for standards-focused K-5 projects. Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education.

Individualism. (n.d.). Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism

C. (2008). John Seely Brown: Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u-MczVpkUA

Martinez, S. L., & Stager, G. (2013). Invent to learn: Making, tinkering, and engineering in the classroom. Constructing Modern Knowledge Press.

P. (2009). Michael Wesch - PdF2009 - The Machine is (Changing) Us. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6eMdMZezAQ

Root-Bernstein, R. S., & Root-Bernstein, M. (1999). Sparks of genius: The thirteen thinking tools of the world's most creative people. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

N. (2013). Sugata Mitra TED 2013 winning talk. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpcEpmNbHds

F. (2010). Thomas de Zengotita: Dilemma of authenticity. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFBnJlazG3M

Tobias, S., & Duffy, T. M. (2009). Constructivist instruction: Success or failure? New York: Routledge.

 Turner, C. (2016, February). What Kids Need From Grown-Ups (But Aren't Getting). Retrieved April 08, 2016, from http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/02/09/465557430/what-kids-need-from-grown-ups-but-arent-getting

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Thursday, April 7, 2016

Transmedia Literacy and the Wicked Problem of Tech Integration Part 2

From my own reflections and observations made from the last five years of setting up writer’s workshop tech lab space, and from connecting multiple applications in a project based learning environment, here are the affordances of Docs over previous text production tools...

Immediacy of Feedback

Musicians are normally trained with an expert guiding them in the moment of their playing, rough areas can be iterated and repeated after each moment of coaching.  Nothing is more powerful for the learner than the master playing along simultaneously pushing the learner into new areas.  
When I play guitar with a teacher, I don’t hear my mistakes, don’t get caught up in what I can’t do yet, but can focus on the flow within the structure of the music.  When alone, critiquing my own recording is brutal, the music I heard in my head while playing is nothing like the transparency of the recording.


A video posted by Chris (@cdveston) on



Why should writing be any different?  By leaving comments or suggestions in live time, writing is changed from a “cave” activity the learner goes through alone, to one of in the moment mentoring, moving the learner through a kind conversational, call and response flow.  Writers should not be left to critique their own playbacks, but have the support and encouragement of teacher and peer.  

Multiple Entry Points

Students often think and produce differently from environment to environment.  School instills its own sense of identity with social hierarchies and a sometimes overwhelming auditory experience.  Extroverted students that thrive sharing documents synchronously in a common lab space have the advantage of language prosody, affect, and body gesture combined with digital space.  Introverted students may be better advantaged in the comfort zone of their own choice of cave.  Going back and forth between spaces opens up more moments of strength for each student.

New Metacognitive Lens

Using Draftback an extension to Google Docs, a stop frame video is created of a document.  In definitive published work we often don’t get to see the wild difference in iterations involved in the writing process.  This awareness, for the learner and for the teacher, spotlights the failed attempts within a system of writing, and validates the tinkering and prototyped quality of writing.  Previous tools could still show a display of multiple drafts, but seeing the document visually reconstructed key by key before your eyes is like the difference between a photograph and film clip, one allows the viewer to step back and mentally piece together the steps before, during, and after - the other projects you into the moment of the frustrating pauses, flurries of productivity, mad deleting, and visual formation of structure in writing.

Socio-Cultural Aspects of Writing

Zone of Proximal development gets simplified into “logical next step learning”.  That is not what Vygotsky researched and wrote about.  That take on learning seems to focus on the world of larger steps the learner cannot do.  Tools in the learner’s environment are cognitive catalysts - tools being anything from the social interaction within the environment, tech devices, and language itself - the environment extending into digital space.  School diminishes this potential in writing because of the obsession with individual measurements requiring individual units of production.  Most students are so conditioned into this individual mode of production that it can be very disturbing to enter a communal digital work space and have another classmate make changes to a document.  However, even working in separate spaces of a communal document opens up a much greater amount of student interactions about writing.  Young writers need authentic audience and when that audience is immediate, critiquing, and crossing into boundaries of co-creation, then the mindset of writing as a social construction, a radical collaboration, are explicit.  (more about how critiquing through the comment function crank up this social aspect of  learning)



Crowdsourcing Editing and Revising
How wasteful are we with our knowledge?  Twenty third graders working together in pairs, groups, and as a class will produce near perfect documents as far as grammar and spelling goes.  This leverages an awareness of dispersed knowledge as students gravitate toward their strengths.  When students are debating about correct grammatical form then the learning outcome of agency is already reached.  The teacher’s role shifts to event organizer.  This gives purpose to grammar and spelling beyond just do it right because the adults want you to.  I first heard, “be the guide on the side not the sage on the stage” at a PD workshop at Region IV in Houston from a 50+ year old woman from the panhandle (go back and insert drawl).  But sometimes I think we should be both, guide, and sage on stage, but let’s blur that stage perimeter into a Boal Theater of the Oppressed participator act where there’s no real delineation between actor and audience.  

Collective Intelligence

Humans have always developed tools in obligated response to a survival threat.  I would argue that our creation and mastery of collaborative tools is a global imperative.  The future problems facing our students will be so much bigger than an individual or governing body - the contributing to and manipulation of collective intelligence will be a necessary skill in response to global need - limited resources, preservation of habitats, pandemic, oppressive leadership, rising sea levels...  Students researching in groups in collaborative formats are part of this training.  Guiding students through jigsawed tasks are first steps but the end goal is not just divided labor, but teaching the awareness of group strength by members of the group naturally fitting into their best contributive role.  Hive research in which every student contributes to a massive collection of notes that then break into affinity groups. (more on inquiry below)  We will always need our caves for encapsulation of thought, but building from Dewey’s defining knowledge as verb, and expanding the action out from self to group to massive hive, it is this collective knowledge as collective action that will define us.

Dispersed Learning

For project based learning, Google Docs creates a critical digital space where all learners can contribute, critique, or and add to others’ work.  Ideally, depending on the group maturity, students self organize the division of labor.  An Activity Theory model of processing how tools, rules, community, and division of labor all interact to move learners toward objectives, keeping in mind that larger learning outcomes may far outweigh intended objectives.  What this model makes clear is that the use of the tool is not the objective, but the active agent for the learning outcomes.  As mentioned earlier, our current school models focus on predictable, linear, packaged learning outcomes that invalidate the larger learning outcomes, particularly the “soft skills” framed by the new ISTE student standard draft and, even though we are now more than fifteen years into the 21st century, the skillset detailed by 21st century learning skills.


Unforeseen Appropriations

In a recent podcast with Reshan Richards, creator of the Explain Everything App, he conceded that the new collaborative live time workspace update will bring adaptations that the creators cannot foresee.  This frames where we are with our current tech tools like Google Docs.  What attracts teachers is the efficiency of collecting digital work and giving feedback, basically using the tool to economize a process they have always done.  That is a natural first start, but the larger learning outcomes will most likely be a slower process.  It would be incredible to think that the ubiquity of photographic and video recording equipment at everyone’s fingertips makes us all digital storytellers threading our narratives through Facebook and Instagram streams, moving back and forth between symbolic forms in a transmedia-transcoding post-Gutenberg Secondary Orality polychronic communicative medium mashup.  

The reality is that most are still teaching and learning in unidirectional channels, very much in continuity with our hierarchical placement of text over the more sensory mediums.  Traditionally, text is for the sacraments manipulated by ecclesiastical elites, the graphic narratives on the walls are for the poor, illiterate masses.  The real questions is whether administrators, teachers, and parents can let go of our premeditated learning objectives and create the space for the larger unpredicted outcomes and validation of diverse mediums of communication?  The manipulative narratives of the power elites have long ago capitalized on the bridging of text with more sensory mediums, just see any political ad media or Super Bowl commercial for examples.  Why would we separate our most powerful form of narrative creation from our students language development when most of their symbolic landscape is based on manipulative transmedia narrative?


see part I and 
part III
part IV
References

 Boal, A. (1985). Theatre of the oppressed. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

Davis, C. (n.d.). 10 Podcast - Transmedia. Retrieved April 07, 2016, from https://soundcloud.com/chris-davis-276158228/10-podcast-transmedia 

 Davis, C. (2015, December 14). Catedral, Augustin Barrios. Retrieved April 07, 2016, from https://www.instagram.com/p/w-Go6hCBxh/

 Davis, C. (2015). Hive researching #dtk12chat #pblchat #edchat pic.twitter.com/7BWoigi8Bg. Retrieved April 07, 2016, from https://twitter.com/chrisdaviscng/status/561585014773911552

 K. (2010). Engeström 01. Retrieved April 07, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0UKgNhtC4k

 FD Channel. (2009, August 3). Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with the pentatonic scale. Retrieved April 07, 2016, from https://youtu.be/DBJ7mBxi8LM

 Tech, C. E. (2016). One iPad as #collaboration magnet, media lab active learning space #ipaded #edtechchat #edchat #makerspace #pblchat pic.twitter.com/pAjytXX651. Retrieved April 07, 2016, from https://twitter.com/elemprojects/status/701562312084365312

 Tech, C. E. (2016). Leveraging #collaboration with one device - the rap challenge #garageband #hiphopEd #edchat #dtk12chat #edtechchat pic.twitter.com/f58XnYcZYa. Retrieved April 07, 2016, from https://twitter.com/elemprojects/status/693087021687033857

 Thornburg, D. D. (n.d.). Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning ... Retrieved April 7, 2016, from http://tcpd.org/thornburg/Handouts/Campfires.pdf

 Vygotskiĭ, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 Vygotskiĭ, L. S., & Cole, M. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

 D.School. (n.d.). Bootcamp Bootleg. Retrieved April 7, 2016, from https://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/BootcampBootleg2010v2SLIM.pdf
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Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Transmedia Literacy and the Wicked Problem of Tech Integration Part 1


Photography existed for one-hundred years before it was accepted as more than graphic fact, that the eye of the photographer was a worthy perspective to consider.  Today, graphic imagery covers our daily landscape more than at any other time in history, and media creation devices are ubiquitous, yet the level of media literacy in teacher pedagogy is often limited to imagery as cognitive bounce-board for text.  Have we put such a high value on text that we mute the rich forms of sensory media?  Embedded within this problem of limited returns on tech integration initiatives is how we interpret and manipulate our media landscape.
Tech integration and teacher pedagogy have been called a “wicked problem”, the focus of fault is often on how to use the tools, not why our present tools change the structure of our learning environments, and potentially change what we call school.  Our tools connect text, graphics, video, audio into transmedia experiences, and yet the deciphering of these media forms is often left until middle or high school.  Tech integration should start in primary years teaching children to decipher and produce multiple media formats alongside language development.  To think around this “mindshift” or “pedagogical shift” we should consider how multiple points of entry change our metacognition of writing, collaborative apps and platforms accelerate socio-cultural learning factors giving writing a participatory authentic audience, and how sensory media broadens the cognitive architecture accessible both in how content is deciphered and how knowledge is demonstrated.



Google Docs also provides a lens into our relationship between text, sensory symbolic forms, and how we think in and between these spaces.  Parallel chronologies can be drawn, one between the tools - Google Docs, and it’s predecessors of word processing, email, and typewriters - the other, pedagogy and the effects both have on cognitive processing.  New tools enter but pedagogies often fall back on past practices.  The focus here is Docs, but the concepts apply to all current devices, networks, and the imminent virtual reality explosion.  Reflecting on our tools also provides insight into the need for a bridge between Common Core Standards and the new draft of ISTE Student Standards or 21st Century Learning Skills.

What Google Docs Changes

Moving from typewriters and word processors, the live connected document changes how individuals and groups engage in the writing process.  The interactive space facilitates...
  • immediacy of feedback
  • multiple entry points through synchronous and asynchronous work
  • a new metacognitive lens to writing process
  • accelerated socio-cultural aspects to writing
  • the ability to crowdsource editing and revising
  • collective intelligence creation
  • dispersed learning environment  
see part II of this post
see part III
see part IV

 How much of this was intended when Google bought Upstartle is unclear but most likely, just as Mojang did not have any idea that he would be teaching children how to read in the affinity spaces around Mindcraft, they could be user appropriated.  This shows the complexity of developing educational technology, and the need to leave the walls wide enough and the ceiling high enough for users to appropriate the tool for their needs.  For example, Book Creator was not originally designed for teachers and Explain Everything was originally a teacher screencast tool for flipping lessons before Reshan Richards saw his students’ spike in motivation and metacognition through making their own screencasts.  For Reshan, this mirrored a cultural phenomenon of rapid prototype-reflection loops our devices were affording in other areas - the perfect selfie, the “event planning” of documenting extreme sports, the carefully crafted public personas - pushing a questioning of what Wesch identified as our online authenticity, but also providing instant access to our cognitive processing and production.  Google Docs fits this category as it incorporates elements of asynchronous social media.


References

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Pantheon Books.

Angeli, C., Valanides, N., Mavroudi, A., Christodoulou, A., & Georgiou, K. (2014). Introducing e-TPCK: An Adaptive E-Learning Technology for the Development of Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, 305-317. doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-8080-9_16

Boal, A. (1985). Theatre of the oppressed. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

Bolton, R. (1989). The Contest of meaning: Critical histories of photography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

DRAFT 1 - 2016 ISTE Standards for Students. (n.d.). Retrieved April 06, 2016, from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qPWppmNVJXeOrguvkrQA_KWHkUMWozIwL326kn6yHyo/edit

Davis, C., Lopez, D., & Leon, N. (2015, March 3). Daniel Kemp and Brian Yearling Book Creator Discussion. Retrieved April 06, 2016, from https://youtu.be/luTTkFYLKnc

Davis, C. (2016). Yes! more playground time, and let the "why" pull along the "how" of tech use #edtechchat https://t.co/6OxLNklW9f. Retrieved April 06, 2016, from https://twitter.com/teacherslens/status/717147045488889856

Davis, C. (2016, March). Journeys in Podcast at SXSWedu with Reshan Richards on Explain Everything. Retrieved April 06, 2016, from https://soundcloud.com/journeys-in-podcasting-podcasting/sxsw-explain-everything-reshan-richards

Jenkins, H., Kelley, W., Clinton, K., McWilliams, J., Pitts-Wiley, R., & Reilly, E. (n.d.). Reading in a participatory culture: Remixing Moby-Dick in the English classroom.

Renaningtyas, L., Mutiaz, I. R., & Syarief, A. (2014, November 11). NOSTALGIA AND AUTHENTICITY OF FAUX VINTAGE PHOTO IN INSTAGRAM THROUGH DIGITAL FILTERS. Retrieved April 06, 2016, from http://www.academia.edu/9274717/NOSTALGIA_AND_AUTHENTICITY_OF_FAUX_VINTAGE_PHOTO_IN_INSTAGRAM_THROUGH_DIGITAL_FILTERS

Resnick, M. (2010, July). BLC10 - Keynote - Resnick. Retrieved April 06, 2016, from https://vimeo.com/16053537

Squiers, C. (1990). The Critical image: Essays on contemporary photography. Seattle: Bay Press.

Thompson, C. (2014, October 9). How Videogames Like Minecraft Actually Help Kids Learn to Read. Retrieved April 06, 2016, from http://www.wired.com/2014/10/video-game-literacy/

Wesch, M. (2009). The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity. Retrieved April 06, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09gR6VPVrpw

 Zhao, Y., Zhang, G., Lei, J., & Qiu, W. (2015). Never send a human to do a machine's job: Correcting the top 5 EdTech mistakes. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.
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