Transcript A systemic view - Harvard University

Welcome Students Near & Far
to
EDUC E-104 Theory and
Practice of Web
Pedagogies
Catalina Laserna, DPhil
Patricia Craig, PhD
Agenda
Introduction of teaching team
The Four Elements
BREAK
Course Overview
Assignments
Readings Preview
Agenda: Lab
• How to post your introduction and learning
goals
• Getting an account on the Collaborative
Curriculum Design Tool (CCDT)
• Distance students
First Element:
Community
• Community
– Popular imagination and discourse
• Place or value based
• Normative
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http://www.cspan.org/search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=community&image1.x=19&image1.y=8
(3:06)
– The social sciences
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How do we distinguish types of community?
Using social structure to explain and predict
Where popular discourse and social science merge
Empirical shift in community means need to rethink
Community
• Community (cont.)
– Intentional communities: learning communities
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Culture of learning
Model is collective understanding
Diversity is valued and utilized
Learning belongs to a community of practice
In education, learning communities is the
culmination of community of practice concept
Community
• Community (cont.)
– Elective communities: virtual communities
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Temporal and spatial gaps
Strength of ties
Power relationships
Expansion of public space into virtual space OR
Further breakdown of community
Second Element:
Theory of Affordances
WHAT IS THIS?
Theory of Affordances
We perceive the typewriter as:
Write-able with?
Sit-able?
Throw-able?
Paint-able?
According to Gibson,
Affordances are…
• Not in the object
• Not in the subject
• “Affordances” conceptualizes the
relationship between the two
What’s the Key?
• It en-ables
• The verb “afford” existed
• Gibson made it a noun:
–“Affordance”
Affordances in this Course
• Learn to analyze technological tools terms
of affordances
• Use the analysis to deepen transformative
designs
MODES AND MEANS OF
COMMUNICATION
Primary Orality
Learning by
doing, talking
Literacy
Use of different
kinds of
“literacy” media
“Cybercy”
We made it up!
Use of digital
media
Permanency of message
O
L
C
Talk
vanishes
Words on Paper= Dynamic
immutable
environments
mobiles
Digital encoding
Transactional Distance
O
L
C
Face-to-face
Type-face
Inter-face
Storage of Information
Distributed system
O
L
C
Burden on
“frees”
Human Memory human
memory
Collective
(Paradox of
memory
Rote
Memorization)
Simulates RL
(Real life)
Affords mixing
of Symbolic
Representations
Grand Social Theories
O
L
C
The Advent of
Language
makes Culture
Possible
Writing affords the
beginnings of
-> Human History
then Printing
press
Digital Media and
Computers
“Artificial
Intelligence”
-> Humans as
Cultural
Creatures
-> The Gutenberg
Revolution
-> The Cybercy
Revolution…
What is going on?
About the O/L/C Matrix
• O/L/C Ideal Types
• Needs to be situated in individual &
collective experiences
• O/L/C is a very broad analytic construct
• O/L/C should “afford” good thinking
• Add value to each other
How Does O/L/C Relate to This
Course?
• The Web? Collaboration?
• Private/Public spaces and modes (e-mail, blog)
• Tools such as “I’m confused” “I have a questions”
button O-> C
• Reflect back on the course’s process as an
example of the practice of Web-Pedagogies.
Third Element: Teaching for
Understanding
• Snapshots from the past
• Rote Memorization: the paradox of literacy
in school
• Memorable Teachers
• What is understanding?
• Aim of the Project: practice and theory
together
What is understanding?
• Two quotes from Piaget:
“To Understand is to Invent”
and
“Thinking is internalized action”
How can we make these insights
shape educational reform?
Teaching for Understanding
with New Technologies
• In what ways does the Web afford new ways of
teaching for understanding?
• … the Generative Topic for this course
The Teaching for Understanding
Framework
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Throughlines
Generative Topic
Understanding Goals
Understanding Performances
Ongoing Assessment
Fourth Element:
A Systems View
• A Systems Perspective
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Big picture
Interrelated aspects of the environment
Unintended consequences
The policy view
A systemic view
Public Policy
Community
home
school
clas
s
Technology
10 Minute BREAK!
Course Overview
Go to the syllabus section of the
Course Website
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~e
xt21979/syllabus/
Assignments
Go to the Assignments section of the
Course Website
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~ext21
979/Assignments/
Readings Preview
for “Varieties of Communities”
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.e
du/~ext21979/syllabus/
Learning Communities in
Classrooms
A Reconceptualization of Educational Practice
By
Katerine Bielaczyc and Allan Collins
1. Reading Questions
2. Structural Preview
Analysis of Learning-Community
Classrooms
KnowledgeBuilding
Fostering a
Community of
Learners
Goals of the
community
Learning activities
Teacher roles and
power relationships
Centrality/peripher
ality and identity
Resources
Discourse
Knowledge
Products
Inquiry Math
Classroom
Lecture Bibliography
• Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and
Commitment in American Life. U of California Press, 1986
• Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community. Touchstone, 1993.
• Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community. Simon and Schuster, 2001.
Reading Preview:
Gemeinschaft Revisited:A
Critique and
Reconstruction of the
Community Concept
By
Steven Brint
Brint
• Sociologists took 2 paths in studying community; one
(Toennies) was in a sense a dead end. Not analytically
viable.
• Other (Durkheimian) produced structural and cultural
variable that tell us something
• But in the process, community concept broken up; can it be
put back together again?
• New Typology: communities as aggregates of people who
share common activities and/or beliefs and who are bound
together principally by relations of affect, loyalty, common
values and/or personal concern.
Brint
• Changing types of communities
• Look at the basis of ties, reason for interaction, types of
interaction
• Different structures produce different outcomes, i.e.
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Level of mutual support
Integration rituals
Role of identity
Conformity
Liberal or illiberal values
• Look particularly at his conclusion: what implications does his
view of the possibilities for egalitarianism have for face to face
learning communities?