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Barbara Lindsey

Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice - 1 views

www.infed.org/...communities_of_practice.htm

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shared by Barbara Lindsey on 03 May 09 - Cached
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  • Supposing learning is social and comes largely from of our experience of participating in daily life? It was this thought that formed the basis of a significant rethinking of learning theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s by two researchers from very different disciplines - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Their model of situated learning proposed that learning involved a process of engagement in a 'community of practice'. 
  • When looking closely at everyday activity, she has argued, it is clear that 'learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often unrecognized as such' (Lave 1993: 5).
  • Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. (Wenger circa 2007)
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  • Over time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore to call these kinds of communities communities of practice. (Wenger 1998: 45)
  • The characteristics of communities of practice According to Etienne Wenger (c 2007), three elements are crucial in distinguishing a community of practice from other groups and communities: The domain. A community of practice is is something more than a club of friends or a network of connections between people. 'It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people' (op. cit.). The community. 'In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other' (op. cit.). The practice. 'Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction' (op. cit.).
  • The fact that they are organizing around some particular area of knowledge and activity gives members a sense of joint enterprise and identity. For a community of practice to function it needs to generate and appropriate a shared repertoire of ideas, commitments and memories. It also needs to develop various resources such as tools, documents, routines, vocabulary and symbols that in some way carry the accumulated knowledge of the community.
  • The interactions involved, and the ability to undertake larger or more complex activities and projects though cooperation, bind people together and help to facilitate relationship and trust
  • Rather than looking to learning as the acquisition of certain forms of knowledge, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger have tried to place it in social relationships – situations of co-participation.
  • It not so much that learners acquire structures or models to understand the world, but they participate in frameworks that that have structure. Learning involves participation in a community of practice. And that participation 'refers not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but to a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities' (Wenger 1999: 4).
  • Initially people have to join communities and learn at the periphery. The things they are involved in, the tasks they do may be less key to the community than others.
  • Learning is, thus, not seen as the acquisition of knowledge by individuals so much as a process of social participation. The nature of the situation impacts significantly on the process.
  • What is more, and in contrast with learning as internalization, ‘learning as increasing participation in communities of practice concerns the whole person acting in the world’ (Lave and Wenger 1991: 49). The focus is on the ways in which learning is ‘an evolving, continuously renewed set of relations’ (ibid.: 50). In other words, this is a relational view of the person and learning (see the discussion of selfhood).
  • 'the purpose is not to learn from talk as a substitute for legitimate peripheral participation; it is to learn to talk as a key to legitimate peripheral participation'. This orientation has the definite advantage of drawing attention to the need to understand knowledge and learning in context. However, situated learning depends on two claims: It makes no sense to talk of knowledge that is decontextualized, abstract or general. New knowledge and learning are properly conceived as being located in communities of practice (Tennant 1997: 77).
  • There is a risk, as Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger acknowledge, of romanticizing communities of practice.
  • 'In their eagerness to debunk testing, formal education and formal accreditation, they do not analyse how their omission [of a range of questions and issues] affects power relations, access, public knowledge and public accountability' (Tennant 1997: 79).
  • Perhaps the most helpful of these explorations is that of Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues (2001). They examine the work of an innovative school in Salt Lake City and how teachers, students and parents were able to work together to develop an approach to schooling based around the principle that learning 'occurs through interested participation with other learners'.
  • Learning is in the relationships between people. As McDermott (in Murphy 1999:17) puts it: Learning traditionally gets measured as on the assumption that it is a possession of individuals that can be found inside their heads… [Here] learning is in the relationships between people. Learning is in the conditions that bring people together and organize a point of contact that allows for particular pieces of information to take on a relevance; without the points of contact, without the system of relevancies, there is not learning, and there is little memory. Learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the various conversations of which they are a part.
  • One of the implications for schools, as Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues suggest is that they must prioritize 'instruction that builds on children's interests in a collaborative way'. Such schools need also to be places where 'learning activities are planned by children as well as adults, and where parents and teachers not only foster children's learning but also learn from their own involvement with children' (2001: 3). Their example in this area have particular force as they are derived from actual school practice.
  • learning involves a deepening process of participation in a community of practice
  • Acknowledging that communities of practice affect performance is important in part because of their potential to overcome the inherent problems of a slow-moving traditional hierarchy in a fast-moving virtual economy. Communities also appear to be an effective way for organizations to handle unstructured problems and to share knowledge outside of the traditional structural boundaries. In addition, the community concept is acknowledged to be a means of developing and maintaining long-term organizational memory. These outcomes are an important, yet often unrecognized, supplement to the value that individual members of a community obtain in the form of enriched learning and higher motivation to apply what they learn. (Lesser and Storck 2001)
  • Educators need to reflect on their understanding of what constitutes knowledge and practice. Perhaps one of the most important things to grasp here is the extent to which education involves informed and committed action.
Sarah Bresnahan

Mechanical Engineering Essay 101: Structure - 0 views

www.articlesfactory.com/...ering-essay-101-structure.html

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shared by Sarah Bresnahan on 25 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Sarah Bresnahan on 25 Apr 13
     
    Writing essays is a common thing for students taking up a course in mechanical engineering, Professors and instructors typically give essay writing assignments to their students to educate them and at the same assess their gained knowledge.
Evanta Technologies

HTML Online Training Course - Evanta Technologies - 0 views

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shared by Evanta Technologies on 26 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Evanta Technologies on 26 Jul 16
     
    Learn how to make use of HTML to make web pages. HTML is the markup language that you surround content with, to tell browsers about headings, tables, lists, etc. HTML is the language of choice for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. Call +91 89786 82555 For Online Training Demo Timings and Classes.
aghora group

Aghora Group |MEP Courses | Mechanical| Electrical|Plumbing MEP Courses | Contact Us - 0 views

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  • aghora group on 10 Jan 14
     
    We comes near to you with a vision to offer excellent training and outsourcing services for the Design & Draughting of Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, Structural, BMS and Fire fighting systems. Today, the world of architecture is becoming more and more powerful and successively huge demands for efficient workers in this field.
Donna Baumbach

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (... - 10 views

www.amazon.com/...0262013363

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shared by Donna Baumbach on 22 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Donna Baumbach on 22 Nov 10
     
    "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings-at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. By focusing on media practices in the everyday contexts of family and peer interaction, the book views the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth in the United States. Integrating twenty-three different case studies-which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music-sharing, and online romantic breakups-in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis."
Michael Johnson

Teaching in Social and Technological Networks « Connectivism - 17 views

www.connectivism.ca/?p=220

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shared by Michael Johnson on 17 Feb 10 - Cached
  • The model falls apart when we distribute content and extend the activities of the teacher to include multiple educator inputs and peer-driven learning.
  • Skype brings anyone, from anywhere, into a classroom. Students are not confined to interacting with only the ideas of a researcher or theorist. Instead, a student can interact directly with researchers through Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and listservs. The largely unitary voice of the traditional teacher is fragmented by the limitless conversation opportunities available in networks. When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage. Course content is similarly fragmented. The textbook is now augmented with YouTube videos, online articles, simulations, Second Life builds, virtual museums, Diigo content trails, StumpleUpon reflections, and so on.
  • Traditional courses provide a coherent view of a subject. This view is shaped by “learning outcomes” (or objectives). These outcomes drive the selection of content and the design of learning activities. Ideally, outcomes and content/curriculum/instruction are then aligned with the assessment. It’s all very logical: we teach what we say we are going to teach, and then we assess what we said we would teach. This cozy comfortable world of outcomes-instruction-assessment alignment exists only in education. In all other areas of life, ambiguity, uncertainty, and unkowns reign. Fragmentation of content and conversation is about to disrupt this well-ordered view of learning. Educators and universities are beginning to realize that they no longer have the control they once (thought they) did
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  • I’ve come to view teaching as a critical and needed activity in the chaotic and ambiguous information climate created by networks.
  • In networks, teachers are one node among many. Learners will, however, likely be somewhat selective of which nodes they follow and listen to. Most likely, a teacher will be one of the more prominent nodes in a learner’s network. Thoughts, ideas, or messages that the teacher amplifies will generally have a greater probability of being seen by course participants. The network of information is shaped by the actions of the teacher in drawing attention to signals (content elements) that are particularly important in a given subject area.
  • While “curator” carries the stigma of dusty museums, the metaphor is appropriate for teaching and learning. The curator, in a learning context, arranges key elements of a subject in such a manner that learners will “bump into” them throughout the course. Instead of explicitly stating “you must know this”, the curator includes critical course concepts in her dialogue with learners, her comments on blog posts, her in-class discussions, and in her personal reflections. As learners grow their own networks of understanding, frequent encounters with conceptual artifacts shared by the teacher will begin to resonate.
  • Today’s social web is no different – we find our way through active exploration. Designers can aid the wayfinding process through consistency of design and functionality across various tools, but ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to click/fail/recoup and continue. Fortunately, the experience of wayfinding is now augmented by social systems. Social structures are filters. As a learner grows (and prunes) her personal networks, she also develops an effective means to filter abundance. The network becomes a cognitive agent in this instance – helping the learner to make sense of complex subject areas by relying not only on her own reading and resource exploration, but by permitting her social network to filter resources and draw attention to important topics. In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • Aggregation should do the same – reveal the content and conversation structure of the course as it unfolds, rather than defining it in advance.
  • Filtering resources is an important educator role, but as noted already, effective filtering can be done through a combination of wayfinding, social sensemaking, and aggregation. But expertise still matters. Educators often have years or decades of experience in a field. As such, they are familiar with many of the concepts, pitfalls, confusions, and distractions that learners are likely to encounter. As should be evident by now, the educator is an important agent in networked learning. Instead of being the sole or dominant filter of information, he now shares this task with other methods and individuals.
  • Filtering can be done in explicit ways – such as selecting readings around course topics – or in less obvious ways – such as writing summary blog posts around topics. Learning is an eliminative process. By determining what doesn’t belong, a learner develops and focuses his understanding of a topic. The teacher assists in the process by providing one stream of filtered information. The student is then faced with making nuanced selections based on the multiple information streams he encounters
  • Stephen’s statements that resonated with many learners centers on modelling as a teaching practice: “To teach is to model and to demonstrate. To learn is to practice and to reflect.” (As far as I can tell, he first made the statement during OCC in 2007).
  • Modelling has its roots in apprenticeship. Learning is a multi-faceted process, involving cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions. Knowledge is similarly multi-faceted, involving declarative, procedural, and academic dimensions. It is unreasonable to expect a class environment to capture the richness of these dimensions. Apprenticeship learning models are among the most effective in attending to the full breadth of learning. Apprenticeship is concerned with more than cognition and knowledge (to know about) – it also addresses the process of becoming a carpenter, plumber, or physician.
  • Without an online identity, you can’t connect with others – to know and be known. I don’t think I’m overstating the importance of have a presence in order to participate in networks. To teach well in networks – to weave a narrative of coherence with learners – requires a point of presence. As a course progresses, the teacher provides summary comments, synthesizes discussions, provides critical perspectives, and directs learners to resources they may not have encountered before.
  • Persistent presence in the learning network is needed for the teacher to amplify, curate, aggregate, and filter content and to model critical thinking and cognitive attributes that reflect the needs of a discipline.
  • Teaching and learning in social and technological networks is similarly surprising – it’s hard to imagine that many of the tools we’re using are less than a decade old (the methods of learning in networks are not new, however. People have always learned in social networks).
  • We’re still early in many of these trends. Many questions remain unanswered about privacy, ethics in networks, and assessment.
  • We’re still early in many of these trends. Many questions remain unanswered about privacy, ethics in networks, and assessment.
  • The tools for controlling both content and conversation have shifted from the educator to the learner. We require a system that acknowledges this reality.
  • In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • Michael Johnson on 17 Feb 10
     
    Discusses the role of teachers in the learning  process through social networks: He gives seven roles 1. Amplifying, 2. Curating, 3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking, 4. Aggregating, 5. Filtering, 6. Modelling, 7. Persistent presence. He ends with this provocative thought: "My view is that change in education needs to be systemic and substantial. Education is concerned with content and conversations. The tools for controlling both content and conversation have shifted from the educator to the learner. We require a system that acknowledges this reality."
Teresa Pombo

Graphic Organizers - 19 views

www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer

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shared by Teresa Pombo on 14 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Teresa Pombo on 14 Oct 09
     
    "Use graphic organizers to structure writing projects, "
  • nick k on 27 Oct 09
     
    Very nice site, great quality materials.
Ninja Essays

Two Unconventional Ways To Improve Your Academic Writing | Thought Catalog - 0 views

thoughtcatalog.com/...-improve-your-academic-writing

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shared by Ninja Essays on 26 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Ninja Essays on 26 Nov 14
     
    "Professors and students who object the typical five-paragraph essay structure don't necessarily have something against it. "
titechnologies

Top 11 Tips to Improve AngularJS Performance - TI Technologies - 0 views

www.titechglobal.com/-improve-angularjs-performance

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shared by titechnologies on 16 Oct 18 - No Cached
  • titechnologies on 16 Oct 18
     
    AngularJS is made to rearrange the complex process of building and overseeing JavaScript applications. In view of the Model-View-Controller, or MVC, programming structure, AngularJS is particularly valuable for making single page web apps. Today, online businesses are enormously affected by the performance of web technologies that they use for their respective tasks. Henceforth, it winds up the importance to dive into the majority of the elements that are harming their business growth. AngularJS can rapidly be added to any HTML page with a straightforward tag. In case you're asking why you have a couple of slow pages, here are a few hints to accelerate your code. AngularJS Optimization Tips Batarang Tool to Benchmark Watchers Batarang is an awesome dev tool from the AngularJS developer that brings down your debugging efforts. In spite of the fact that it has numerous new features, some of them enable you to profile and track the execution of your AngularJS performance. In addition, the watch tree figures out which extensions are not destroyed as it is by all accounts if there is an increase in the memory. Chrome Dev Tool Profiler to Identify Performance Bottlenecks This one is a helpful device that gives you the alternative to choose which profile type you need to make. Take Heap Snapshot, Record Allocation Timeline, and Record Allocation Profile are utilized for memory profiling. After this performance improvement, your app will complete in under two seconds and clients can freely connect with it then. Limit your watchers Talking about which, whenever you introduce data-bindings, you make more $scopes and $$watchers, which drags out the digest cycle. Excessively numerous $$watchers can cause lag, so restrain their utilization as much as possible. Utilize scope.$evalAsync On the off chance that you endeavor to manually initiate the digest cycle while it's now running, you could get an error. To keep this from happening, utilize scope.$evalAsync rather than $appl
Abhinav Outsourcings

How does Canada Express Entry make Immigration easy for you! - 0 views

immigrationvisaconsultantsdelhi.blogspot.com/...canada-express-entry-make.html

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  • Abhinav Outsourcings on 05 Mar 19
     
    Thinking of an easy and hassle free to make Canada your abode. Well, its very much possible now with Immigration on the rise. What is interesting to note is the fact that this steady inflow of immigrants from all around the globe helps with economic growth, as labor force makes for a more balanced and sustained structure financially as well as economically.
Abhinav Outsourcings

Why Australia Point System A Vital Part Of Permanent Residency? - 0 views

abhinavoutsourcings.over-blog.com/...rt-of-permanent-residency.html

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  • Abhinav Outsourcings on 09 Oct 19
     
    Not only this once you have aced the basic structure of the Australia point system and its role in getting you the ideal points tally for an Invitation to Apply from the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The point system forms a deciding factor of your eligibility as it assesses whether your job, skill set and work experience is in tandem with the requirement of the particular Australian province that you will be a part of in the future.
Abhinav Outsourcings

How Can I Get Australian PR In 2019? - 0 views

www.apsense.com/...get-australian-pr-in-2019.html

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shared by Abhinav Outsourcings on 29 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • Abhinav Outsourcings on 29 Nov 19
     
    When you can get a citizenship after 3 years of residing in Canada, what is better than getting an Australian permanent residency. After all, it carries along with it, a host of long-term benefits, that make life comfortable, easy and hassle free for you as well as your family. Right from free universal education till the age of 18 at public funded schools as well as university fees at subsidized rates, free universal healthcare as well as an impressive social security perk structure that comes within Australian PR Visa.
apnahumsafar

best matrimonial website in india: Aggarwal Wedding Style On With Hindu Marriage Customs - 0 views

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  • apnahumsafar on 04 Jan 21
     
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Abhinav Outsourcings

NRIs based in 5 Eyes countries can gain from Covid Response Benefit Schemes - 0 views

m.economictimes.com/...85270002.cms

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shared by Abhinav Outsourcings on 03 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Abhinav Outsourcings on 03 Jan 22
     
    With a rigorous ongoing vaccination drive and the support of economic stimulus packages, the world is gradually trying to go back to normal. The healthcare structure and economic policies of each country played a vital role in fighting this deadly pandemic.
Jenny Davis

OER Commons: Open Educational Resources - 9 views

www.oercommons.org

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shared by Jenny Davis on 12 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Rhondda Powling on 12 Jun 09
     
    OER Commons is all about sharing open educational resources. Subject areas include: Arts, Business, Humanities, Mathematics & Statistics, Science & Technology and Social Sciences. Over 16 different types of course materials are provided. You can search OER Commons by subject area, grade level, material type, media format and conditions of use or by selecting a relevant tag.
  • Jenny Davis on 07 Mar 12
     
    The Internet is rich with open educational resources that both educators and students might want to use. However, finding those resources is often time-consuming. The OER Commons website was created to help educators, students, and lifelong learners find Open Educational Resources that are already posted somewhere on the Internet. OER Commons is not a search engine (like Google) and it is not a list of links. This site is a structured database of links to high-quality resources found on other websites. OER Commons provides a single point of access through which educators, students, and all learners can search,browse, evaluate, and discuss over 30,000 high-quality OER.
Sarah Bresnahan

How You Should Not Underestimate Your Architectural Dissertation - 0 views

jamesharl.wordpress.com/...dissertation-writing

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shared by Sarah Bresnahan on 25 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Sarah Bresnahan on 25 Apr 13
     
    If you are on your final year as an architecture student, then perhaps you are now undertaking a very important project called dissertation. Architectural dissertation writing is not an easy task.
li li

As white cheap snapbacks thinking can not easily maintain a neutral and objective way t... - 1 views

The computer is not sentimental ( maybe we can offer people with feelings , if we to Elephant Man , as if thinking want ) , we want the computer to the cheap snapbacks need to give us the facts an...

started by li li on 04 Sep 13 no follow-up yet
Barbara Lindsey

My School, Meet MySpace: Social Networking at School | Edutopia - 1 views

www.edutopia.org/my-school-meet-myspace

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shared by Barbara Lindsey on 11 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Months before the newly hired teachers at Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy (SLA) started their jobs, they began the consuming work of creating the high school of their dreams -- without meeting face to face. They articulated a vision, planned curriculum, designed assessment rubrics, debated discipline policies, and even hammered out daily schedules using the sort of networking tools -- messaging, file swapping, idea sharing, and blogging -- kids love on sites such as MySpace.
  • hen, weeks before the first day of school, the incoming students jumped onboard -- or, more precisely, onto the Science Leadership Academy Web site -- to meet, talk with their teachers, and share their hopes for their education. So began a conversation that still perks along 24/7 in SLA classrooms and cyberspace. It's a bold experiment to redefine learning spaces, the roles and relationships of teachers and students, and the mission of the modern high school.
  • When I hear people say it's our job to create the twenty-first-century workforce, it scares the hell out of me," says Chris Lehmann, SLA's founding principal. "Our job is to create twenty-first-century citizens. We need workers, yes, but we also need scholars, activists, parents -- compassionate, engaged people. We're not reinventing schools to create a new version of a trade school. We're reinventing schools to help kids be adaptable in a world that is changing at a blinding rate."
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • It's the spirit of science rather than hardcore curriculum that permeates SLA. "In science education, inquiry-based learning is the foothold," Lehmann says. "We asked, 'What does it mean to build a school where everything is based on the core values of science: inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection?'"
  • It means the first-year curriculum is built around essential questions: Who am I? What influences my identity? How do I interact with my world? In addition to science, math, and engineering, core courses include African American history, Spanish, English, and a basic how-to class in technology that also covers Internet safety and the ethical use of information and software. Classes focus less on facts to be memorized and more on skills and knowledge for students to master independently and incorporate into their lives. Students rarely take tests; they write reflections and do "culminating" projects. Learning doesn't merely cross disciplines -- it shatters outdated departmental divisions. Recently, for instance, kids studied atomic weights in biochemistry (itself a homegrown interdisciplinary course), did mole calculations in algebra, and created Dalton models (diagrams that illustrate molecular structures) in art.
  • This is Dewey for the digital age, old-fashioned progressive education with a technological twist.
  • computers and networking are central to learning at, and shaping the culture of, SLA. "
  • he zest to experiment -- and the determination to use technology to run a school not better, but altogether differently -- began with Lehmann and the teachers last spring when they planned SLA online. Their use of Moodle, an open source course-management system, proved so easy and inspired such productive collaboration that Lehmann adopted it as the school's platform. It's rare to see a dog-eared textbook or pad of paper at SLA; everybody works on iBooks. Students do research on the Internet, post assignments on class Moodle sites, and share information through forums, chat, bookmarks, and new software they seem to discover every day.
  • Teachers continue to use Moodle to plan, dream, and learn, to log attendance and student performance, and to talk about everything -- from the student who shows up each morning without a winter coat to cool new software for tagging research sources. There's also a schoolwide forum called SLA Talk, a combination bulletin board, assembly, PA system, and rap session.
  • Web technology, of course, can do more than get people talking with those they see every day; people can communicate with anyone anywhere. Students at SLA are learning how to use social-networking tools to forge intellectual connections.
  • In October, Lehmann noticed that students were sorting themselves by race in the lunchroom and some clubs. He felt disturbed and started a passionate thread on self-segregation.
  • "Having the conversation changed the way kids looked at themselves," he says.
  • "What I like best about this school is the sense of community," says student Hannah Feldman. "You're not just here to learn, even though you do learn a lot. It's more like a second home."
  • As part of the study of memoirs, for example, Alexa Dunn's English class read Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas's account of growing up Iranian in the United States -- yes, the students do read books -- and talked with the author in California via Skype. The students also wrote their own memoirs and uploaded them to SLA's network for the teacher and class to read and edit. Then, digital arts teacher Marcie Hull showed the students GarageBand, which they used to turn their memoirs into podcasts. These they posted on the education social-networking site EduSpaces (formerly Elgg); they also posted blogs about the memoirs.
Barbara Lindsey

According to Study, Half of U.S. Adults Use Social Media - ReadWriteWeb - 0 views

readwriteweb.com/...us_adults_use_social_media.php

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 09 Aug 08 - Cached
  • Although these numbers look promising for our favorite genre, social media, they should probably be taken with a grain of salt. While we do believe that text messaging is an important method of communication, it doesn't quite fit with what the standard definition of social media is: blogging, social networking sites, and other web properties that engage collective groups of people to drive their content. We would like to see how the numbers really break down among the three "social media" activities they measured, but that data was not immediately available.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 09 Aug 08
       
      Really good point.
  • In exploratory qualitative research, we have undertaken indicates the consumer might take a broader view of what social media might mean. For example, it could be taken by consumers to mean any digital form of personal communication that helps enable peer collaboration and sharing. This softer, less-structured definition is possibly useful in determining possible future growth areas of personal social P2P media from a consumer-centric POV."
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