This was a challenge I set out for myself . It was the first time I sent my work to a Brazilian university . Ironically, what I have been doing at school was first shown and recognized abroad instead of inside my own organization (school) – which does not even know about this paper…so closed it is inside its own processes.  The web and networking was an outward movement.  I am now coming back and trying to find my place in the local educational environment. Not easy.  Second challenge (minor and fun), believe it or not  – I had never made an academic poster before.  Incredible how fussy some people can be over standard, form and norm and how anxious you can get for fear of not being accepted if you do not “conform”.

I had already written about my experience in Portuguese for Praxis (a 30-page ) but needed to condense it twice  – first for the submission paper: “Ferramentas Sociais, Redes e Interação”  (webcurriculo – (thanks Neli for lending me a hand) and then later for the poster. In spite of my lack of experience in this field, I managed to make one after after a quick search on the web. It was a good exercise in synthesis and visual distribution/impact.  Once it was printed, and hung,  I immediately realized I should have done it totally different.  This how one learns – set yourself a challenge, go for it, do your best, verify results, adjust, lather, rinse and repeat…or is it the other way round? 

As I listened to the various presentations, I compared the reactions to mine and was reminded of the steps I have made these years towards trying to find a balance in my courses. At the language institute I first worked,  I was just an instructor, training people to develop their communication and linguistic skills in a foreign language, not really engaged in any reality but the service I was delivering.  However, when I moved to the secondary school, although the job profile was the same as before, I increasingly became an educator and as such, gradually much more aware of the social engineering  we are subjected to through the uniform, over-structured, inflexible and centralized programs imposed . While trying to implement these new technologies in the classroom , I was constantly confronted with the unresponsive wall of institutional bureaucracy.

While writing this post, I dug up this drawing made by the Time Project team and compared it to a sketch late Lee Baber asked me to check some time ago. There is so much talk about different curricula.  Education surely involves some amount and  quantity – skills and competencies -  but I’d say it is mostly about quality – values and a better understanding of action and knowledge in time – Chronos and Kairos. How do you achieve it on the Web?

1. Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes

2. Learning and Innovation Skills

* Creativity and Innovation Skills
* Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
* Communication and Collaboration Skills

3. Information, Media and Technology Skills
* Information Literacy
* Media Literacy
* ICT Literacy

4. Life and Career Skills
* Flexibility & Adaptability
* Initiative & Self-Direction
* Social & Cross-Cultural Skills
* Productivity & Accountability
* Leadership & Responsibility

and four 21ST CENTURY SUPPORT SYSTEMS:

1. Standards and Assessment of 21st Century Skills
2. Curriculum and Instruction
3. Professional Development
4. Learning Environments

]]> http://beespace.net/1st-web-curriculo/feed/ 4 http://beespace.net/on-learning-and-instructional-design/ http://beespace.net/on-learning-and-instructional-design/#comments Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:27:55 +0000 Barbara Dieu http://beespace.net/?p=572 On the Online Toys and Tools discussion forum,  Sirin Soyoz from Istambul states

As far as I experience, it is instructional design that facilitates learning and learners must take on new roles in the learning process.

This is very much the discussion now taking place in Week 6 of the FOC08 course, which I am also following  and participating in so I have decided to bring them together. Connecting thoughts, weaving threads and ideas.

Like Stephen, I am skeptic of words like “must” and a universal solution. I question the whole industry of e-moderation, e-facilitation that has come in the wake of the e-hype and forces people into fragmented views and compartments.

While instructional design may seem an efficient way of accomplishing tasks,  I do not see it necessarily conducing to learning. Instructional design is just another name for teaching -  acting upon or transmitting (through various methods, techniques and psychological & motivational maneuvers) the content or behaviour deemed to be correct or required for a certain end. So its motives reside outside the learners even if they are requested to take part and may influence the design.

Learning, on the other hand,  is a continuous personal quest towards sense making, expressing it and making it work so as to accomplish not only our individual but also collective needs. Beautiful design, instruction, role taking may facilitate learning but are not a pre-condition for it to occur. Children learn different strategies and have insights while playing without any conscious design or control on the part of their parents.

As Stephen illustrates well, in for some people in some groups or the software community, learning occurs in spite of

commonality of purpose (some people are professionals, others merely interested), far from universal motivation to learn (others signed on for any of a variety of motives) and certainly no professional e-moderation.

He asks:

Given the absence of the elements claimed to be necessary to support learning – the absence of instructional design, the absence of professional e-moderation, the absence of commonality of purpose – then we have to ask, what is it, really, that is fostering the learning in such a situation.

As I see it, from my own experience as a learner/teacher/mother/daughter/wife/citizen and many other perspectives I have acquired during my life, learning happens continuously consciously and unconsciously, by being immersed in life and not separated from it. We observe, relate to others, read, compare and contrast, expose ourselves, dip into the pool of collective knowledge trying to find answers to our questions, try, fail and endlessly repeat what seems to us the correct pattern with slight variations trying to perfect whatever we find incomplete or lacking.

Very often we learn incidentally through exposure, immersion and observing what does not work or went wrong, which is not necessarily very “efficient” if measured against “time and ROI” which seem to drive everyone’s actions nowadays.

I must say I have been very fortunate to have had many people who walked with me along the way – they shared with me some of their own insight,  sometimes held my hand,  sometimes instructed me, sometimes nudged or challenged me to overcome self-built obstacles – they helped me stretch a bit further each time. There are many roads that lead to knowledge and we cannot take them all as this experiment/course well illustrates. Each one of us will follow our own path according to background, assumptions, choices and needs.

However, do we all have the choice, the time, the people and the resources to learn, expand and share our knowledge with others ? Does the economy/society we live in today allow for and recognize this kind of learning ? How can theories map a dynamic process? (remembering that the map is not the territory). Is it possible to measure and evaluate it? What for and how? Don’t we prescribe and obfuscate emergence by enforcing a model, a theory?

What is an online community?

This is the first question in the FOC08 course and Leigh introduces the topic with a warning and some advice.

Most people use the phrase “online community” very loosely …and it is important that we try and develop an understanding of what exactly we are looking for, and techniques for looking.

According to Wikipedia, in biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment. From this perspective, an online community at its very basic would be people who share and interact in an online environment.

However, there is much more to it than meets the eye and it is important to question concepts and definitions we have grown used to and long taken for granted in our particular contexts.  In a period of change, when navigating uncharted territories and meeting new cultures, such general concepts must be questioned.

History changes, but so does the meaning of words. Depending on the situation, words like freedom and tyranny and faith have different applications and consequences. When does faith constrict freedom? When does freedom become a cover-up for tyranny? Most important, who has the power to define these words? (Source: NY TIMES  CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK : FREEDOM TWISTED BY CORRUPT REGIMES by Margo Jefferson January 13, 2004)

In the same way, the word “online community” has been used in so many situations by different people that the word does not stick to what it stands for. It is a loaded word, which may be used to manipulate people’s emotional needs for different purposes.

So again just observing and noting down the different layers of meaning I have noticed.

Differently from a traditional course during which the teacher and/or prescribed readings are the source of knowledge and impart it to others at a certain time and place, the starting point here are the participants themselves at their own places. They voice their points of view and perspectives arising from their own experience and check their assumptions against the readings suggested and what others have written.

Even though the initial required reading list and course framework/progression were not decided upon by the participants themselves and the interaction seems to be limited to the particular context of the course and the people who have enrolled, the platform used is a wiki, an open collaboration tool which allows others to add to it. It is a flexible structure which could be eventually modified. Participants are encouraged to post their own reflections on their own blogs and link to others not only through their blogroll but also when referring or quoting others. As posts are online and open, they may be “eventually”  commented upon and challenged by others who are not part of this specific context (provided their comment area is open and allows for this kind of interaction).

By posing the question “what is an online community?”, offering a number of articles from different professional fields (knowledge management, technology business, philosophy, sociology, education, research, politics) and by letting people show what they know, i.e., illustrate perceptions of community from their own context,  Leigh facilitates the explicit expression of knowledge.  By trying to define “an online community”,  the different individual answers reveal to others in turn what the initial common ground may be, where the intersections appear and where the differences (opinion, language, skills, netiquette or plain stubborness) may obstruct/impede communication and  make people remain silent, over-react, enter disputes, take diverging roads or quit.

The moderator´s role would be to perceive these moments, calm or encourage such behaviours so as to maintain the community´s harmony.

Therefore, the starting point is what each one of us already knows, how we represent it for ourselves and others, how this concept is used /understood and expressed by the different personae in their different fields of practice and interest.  

A second step, an observation of language, an awareness of worlds/behaviours different from our own (not only geographical but social, cultural, linguistic) are  paramount to examine recurring patterns, how these are transposed in different situations – which community avoids them,  which reinforces them and why.

“Eurocentrism, like Renaissance perspectives in painting, envisions the world from a single privileged point. . . . Eurocentrism bifurcates the world into the “West and the Rest” and organizes everyday language into binaristic hiearchies implicitly flattering to Europe: our ‘nations,’ their ‘tribes’; our ‘religions,’ their ‘superstitions’; our ‘culture,’ their ‘folklore’; our ‘art,’ their ‘artifacts’; our ‘demonstrations,’ their ‘riots’; our ‘defense,’ their ‘terrorism.’ ” Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism. Routledge. London and New York, 1994. p.2 “

Individuals, communities, groups, networks…language and critical literacy are paramount.

Some people trying to understand how all this happens but do not manage to follow as they expect,  feel they are not included.

Lynne’s “breathing-in-and-breathing-out-in-foc” title for this post is a metaphor for calming down when  in distress and also describes what you do at childbirth to alleviate the pain. She is overwhelmed by the experience, feeling out of breath and at loss by not being able to follow. “I am getting that left out feeling that I recall so well from grade school when being the last one picked to play on the soft ball team… But Debs’ comment on being overwhelmed too and Illya encouragement gave me my feet back and reminded me to breathe.”  Like in support groups, finding out and meeting other people who struggle or have faced the same problem, sharing and lending a hand helps those involved to overcome or move “beyond” their condition/experience.

Sarah muses over and reflects on the process and architecture of a blog workshop she gave and what she imagines the best sequence might be: “The week before, we talked a lot more about concepts and I don’t know if that was quite as interesting for participants – they were still focusing on the blog technology. I am wondering now if we would have been better off concentrating on setting up the blogs in the first two weeks, and then in the third week looking at commenting and following blogs in a reader.”

People learn differently through different means and feel stimulated through different environments.

Nellie, for instance, is more attuned to the synchronous moment and is very active urging people to experiment and attend the conferences she organizes on different platforms.

Others, like Dolores in this post, may prefer to ground their experience in theory.

Illya may express some of her concepts through pictures or finding points she connects to in other posts, Greg has been actively representing his thoughts through graphics, while Andrew has started a concept map “to make better sense of the learnscape”.

Some, when taken out of their comfort zone, question the validity of the whole concept.

Trish “what is this for…? I am just contributing to millions of other egos that bumble spewed thought into an endless virtual world? Does publishing this ‘out there’ define me, leave my mark?”

I’d say it does…I see it as the beginning of our social and cognitive presence online, a way we can relate to what and who surround us in this new environment.

Russ wonders how this diffuse, fuzzy learning can occur. “What is learning anyway? Is it that I learned a certain amount of content or is it that I grew in my understanding, knowledge and social skills related to a field of knowledge that actually networks with people’s attitudes, knowledge and actions?”

Kay looks back, incorporates the Zen spirit and let’s it flow. She starts understanding that learning should not be a battle to control time, processes, content or people or respond to assumptions or fit roles. “I am no longer worrying about currently being a lurker … postings are being read and considered. I am reflecting and trying to let go of starting with the end in mind, realizing that it’s OK to not know where my learning will lead, relax and enjoy the journey.”

So I ask – have we ever listened to or read about our own learners’ experience about learning? Do we manage to read behind the lines, check the stories and metaphors used? Have we been able to visualize and map how they are going about their learning so as to help them get better in the process?  Can we relate and feel their angst when they understand what to do but can’t figure out how to do it best? Do we let them be and become or do we impose our ways and views of learning?

I started posting first in the email forum, which is easier and a more immediate way of establishing contact than a blog. The curious being in me lurked for some time, trying to get the gist of the flow, observe people’s moves and interventions:  some making contributions, others asking for help and some directing the conversation. I read the reactions/approaches and , malgré moi (something I still need to control), flamed (reacted to some too strongly). I have finally started posting and will try, from now onwards to link, thread, weave in and discuss the various posts or comment on the blogs.

Note on the side: for the coders out there, it would be wonderful if someone would come up with a widget or plugin which would automatically send all the posts we make in other forums to our blogs (like twitter does). This would bring together all the data we have dispersed around the web into our own portfolio.

I also went over some material I had stored and contributed to the course wiki in the extra readings area. This recording of a presentation made by James Farmer to the 2005 EVO Session on weblogging took me some time to convert into an ogg file but is worth listening to. I hope I can recover the slides – I must have them in some back-up file in my old computer. Anyway, James talks about facilitating a community of inquiry using blogs and message boards, the topic of this week – I am a bit behind in some areas and advanced in others   If you are more visual that aural and have some time for reading, then you can also have a go at in more detail in his paper.

As I joined late, I had a certain difficulty in finding who the other people from the course were for there was  little interaction with them in the first phase. There is an introduction thread in the discussion area of the wiki but this, from what I gather,  served mostly for people to connect to Leigh (cannot access it from outside) so he could add participants to the Google group list. Although I could catch up with what was going on through posts to the google groups and read blogs that quickly summed up events and synthetized reactions (threading conversations and summing up what is happening in a distributed and horizontal environment helps a lot)

I missed the interaction or socialization phase (phatic talk) before people starting posting on the message boards and their own blogs.

Last year when moderating Social Media in ELT,  we invited Charles Cameron to animate the opening and ending of the session with games. It’s a fun ice-breaker and forces people in a certain way to find out about new participants in other ways than just the common interest of the course.  Self-disclosure and conversations, like Jeffrey Keefer experienced (even though it was a one to one Skype conversation),   remove the distance, build more trust, develop trust and establish an online identity and help us remember each other in a different way.  It also avoids the flood of standard introduction type emails or grouping ( chums only) in separate forums that characterize this phase. It is a difficult task to meet, place the name and connect to new people.  This is why I also enjoy other visual clues, like a photograph or avatar I can relate to and tend to be suspicious of people who do not provide details about their context or whereabouts. I feel it is important to establish not only a cognitive presence but also a social one.

I have now aggregated most blogs (please check if I have missed yours) in Gregarius but again find it difficult to follow who is posting what. First, because many people have used the same title for their blogs so it is difficult to distinguish one from the other and second,  because the person’s name does not appear together with the posts. (still playing with tool so there may be a plugin or something which can help me do that) . Another way of remembering people’s names would be for them to add to their signatures their blog address in the Google Groups – this would make it easier to relate name to blog and facilitate connections.

Next post probably end of the afternoon – rushing to the dentist.

As I had not first planned to participate and joined late, the beginning was chaotic. Fortunately the course allows for plenty of time for people to digest the concepts and react .  I was enjoying the freedom of my sabbatical year to go to conferences, museums, exhibitions and get together with people from different walks of life and professional areas. More and more, I have been trying to engage with non-homogeneous groups of people. After having spent 35 years enclosed inside a classroom, interacting with the same crowd and doing the same things, I have an imperious urge to know what is happening out there and learning from the world around me.

Acknowledging and interacting with this diversity of cultural, linguistic and professional personal backgrounds, assumptions and motivations is IMHO a key competency not only f2f  but even more so when one is online, where physical cues are almost nonexistent.

Leigh says:

facilitation is a rare and valuable skill to have. It is a service that is often used in conferences, debates, panels and tutorials, or simply where groups of people are meeting and need someone to help negotiate meaning and understanding, and to keep everyone engaged and on task.

* Good facilitation depends on good communication skills.

* Good online facilitation depends on good online communication skills.

* Facilitating online communities… what does that involve?

Courses like this one, however, rely mostly on written text, so the language used / the educational perspective and jargon may be an important barrier for expression of those from a non-Anglo-Saxon culture, non- academic background or different literacy practices.

Non-native speakers have the double trouble of negotiating meaning  and weaving their tacit knowledge of another background with the explicit learning of the technical knowledge and skills about the nature and practice of the particular skill or competency being acquired in a language different from their own – English (Beyond Communities of Practice – Language, Power and Social Context”, Cambridge University Press, 2005, page 151).

I am in ELT (secondary school) but, in spite of all my practice and exposure on the web, I am finding increasing difficulty in communicating my thoughts in different contexts where a particular language/jargon is used (same for the other languages I speak – French , Polish and Portuguese) if I am not constantly exposed to them and do not practice it. I am permanently chasing for the different meanings of words and collocations so as to negotiate their impact and try not sound inarticulate or inappropriate. Also, are the online facilitation skills that come from an Anglo-Saxon culture the same for the French, Brazilian, Polish, Spanish cultures or do we accept them as being so because they have not been developed in our online contexts?

I am a self-directed learner -most of what I know comes from observing, experiencing and putting myself in situations where the skills I wish to acquire are required. I also test my possibilities, watch for reactions and try to learn from my mistakes. So although I have already facilitated/moderated/taught online courses and belong to different online communities this time, I decided I would record the process from an intercultural angle.

Next topic: First Steps