(Disclaimer: this will be a little hard to follow for those unfamiliar with Knowledge Forum (KF) and Knowledge Building. Sorry.)
I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, but one of the things I proposed in the school's educational technology plan, was to have the rector, academic director, department heads and a few teachers in a course I would teach on Saturdays. I've had four four-hour sessions with a group of 24 "students" and it's been amazing. I haven't written too much about the course and now is a good time to stop and reflect... and let you know what I've done and how I feel it has worked. (BTW, you can find the course syllabus in our Google Sites).
The first week (before the first class) we all read Marlene Scardamalia's "Collective Cognitive Responsibility for the Adavancement of Knowledge" and talked about it. Mostly the class talked and I made some remarks every once in a while. I took Notes of what they said on the board and encouraged them to use the "Knowledge Creation" scaffold from Knowledge Forum in their talk. I used them on the board. Mostly "My Theory" and "I need to understand (INTU)". They are all teachers and apparently most of them had done the reading and everyone at least scanned it. The discussion was wonderful and they were all very excited with Marlene's ideas.
For the last hour of the class we went to the computer lab (some of them don't have laptops) and logged into Knowledge Forum. They had read all about it in Marlene's article, but had never actually seen it. Mimmicking Kate B.'s class at HGSE, I created a view called "Mucking about" and instructed them to log in and just play with writing Notes in that View while I ran around troubleshooting Java, etc. on some of their laptops. The View was absolute chaos after an hour, but they had good time had been able to post Notes, what I needed all of them to do. Their homework was to post their ideas from the class discussion in one View, and their ideas about the next reading on another. They were very related, since the second reading was Kate B. and Allan Collins' "Learning communities in classrooms". This made the task a little confusing and the discurse a little hard to follow. Next time I'll follow van Aalst et al's advice and organize the syllabus around ideas or topics rather than readings. Everyone had to post at least one Note in each View. I'm still not sure about that. I feel I might have focused them on the task of writing rather than the ideas, but was still very useful for them to start getting comfortable with writing their ideas and with using the platform. I think I might do that differently next time, but I'm still not sure. I need to "force" them to use the platform at first.
During the week the two views filled up and most of them had written more than one Note. They were crowded and it was nearly impossible to write any more of follow the thread of the discussion.I thought it was a natural point to discuss "Rise-aboves" and principle of rising-above we had read about. I started the next class in the lab and asked them to work in groups trying to group Notes into different Views and write Rise-above notes. I showed them how to do both using some notes from the "Mucking about" View. Some of them did a wonderful job, some of them didn't get the idea too well and just "packed" some notes inside a Rise-above or moved them to new View and then wrote a new note trying to synthesize them. We talked about rising above later in the class and we also discussed Kate B.'s piece and had a wonderful talk again. I didn't mimmick the scaffolds so much, and some of them were already playing with them in their discourse.
Their homework this time, was to try and Rise-above the ideas we had and to read a paper about "Lesson Study", the Japanese form of professional development. I new this reading was going to be a tough point in the course. It was quite long and introduced the idea of Lesson Study, where teachers meet in groups to plan together, teach-observe-debrief-improve-teach again-observe-again-and-write-about a lesson. We will start doing Lesson Study this year and use Knowledge Forum in it, so I expected some resistance (the literature says there normally is. See Chokshi and Fernandez). The article is not the best to explain lesson study and the way it works, but it is a wonderful example, a case study. I decided to give a 1-hour lecture on Lesson Study before starting the discussion. I had seen in KF, during the week, that many of them thought they didn't have time to do that (Challenge 1 in Chokshi...), others thought it was a foreign idea that wouldn't work in our culture (Challenge 3 in Chokshi) and others believed it sounded like something they did: Microteaching and Department Heads observing teachers' classes and debriefing with them. I addressed each of these in my lecture and then opened the floor to the usual discussion. It was very good and I didn't see the resistance I had expected. It wasn't that evident. They still thought it was a Challenge to find time, but the enthusiasm shown by some teachers, some Department Heads and the Directives was very helpful. We kept talking about Lesson Study that week in the KF database and started a new view to talk about assessment. We read the longest paper so far, a wonderful piece by Van Aalst and Chan about the use of e-portfolios for assessment of individual and collective knowledge advancement in Knowledge Building classrooms (that used KF).
During the week, everyone was very excited and felt these ideas matched perfectly our qualitative approach to assessment. Some people brought up their own experiences (as it had always happened before). Friday night, there were a few people online at the same time and I saw, literally, how our database grew in the Assessment View. I mostly prepared my next class based on what they had all said and something they had brought up in a great example of metacognition: the way we were building Rise-above Notes, and in general rising above our ideas, isn't working as we would like it to. Some people feel their points of View are not captured in the Rise-above Notes and we have not come to enough agreement and answers as to say we can really Rise-above.
While I planned the class I realized I could not assign the reading I had planned for the next week (tomorrow). It totally changed the topic and we still needed to work on what we are doing. I decided to use the preparation of a View for visitors (Kate, Marlene, Carl and maybe some of Marlene's post-docs will come by our database) as an excuse for them to go back into what we had said and learned and bring up questions we still needed to get and answer to (INTU) and things had said that seemed really interesting or important. I haven't read much of the database this week, but sure hope it worked.
Many of them (data from the Analytic Toolkit in KF) had read very little of their colleagues Notes and written very little too. I don't worry about those who are not writing much, but I do about the not reading. Reading and not writing keeps you in the periphery (Bielaczcy and Collins), but it doesn't leave you out of the community discourse and advancement. Those who don't even read are probably not learning too much either, critical of what we are learning or uninterseted. I sent some feedback to each of them about their participation in the KF database via e-mail. I have seen some change this week in some of them, and some stress in others, who feel they can't write more than they do now, but my feedback made them feel they should. I'll discuss this with them tomorrow with both the teacher and student hats on.
The course had been wonderful, I have learned a lot about the school and about about knowledge building too. I still have a lot of question and things to work on. Rising-above our ideas and kick-starting Lesson Study (led by the Department Heads in the course) are my most urgent concerns.
Bielaczyc, K., & Collins, A. (1999). Learning communities in classrooms: a reconceptualization of educational practice. In C. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional Design theories and models (Vol. II, pp. 269-292). Mahwan: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Chokshi, S., & Fernandez, C. (2004). Challenges to Importing Japanese Lesson Study: Concerns, Misconceptions, and Nuances. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(7), 520-525.
Scardamalia, M. (2002). Collective cognitive responsibility for the advancement of knowledge. In B. Smith (Ed.), Liberal education in the knowledge society (pp. 67-98). Chicago: Open Court.
Fernandez, C. (2005). Lesson Study: A Means for Elementary Teachers to Develop the Knowledge of Mathematics Needed for Reform-Minded Teaching? Mathematical Thinking & Learning, 7(4), 265-289.
van Aalst, J., & Chan, C. K. K. (2007). Student-Directed Assessment of Knowledge Building Using Electronic Portfolios. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 16(2), 175-220.
Yesterday, the blue-haired-girl came back from Tunja. She was invited to be keynote speaker at the Colombian History Conference (Congreso Colombiano de Historia). She presented the Bicentennial project and had awesome responses. The saddest of all: your project is awesome, wonderful, amazing... pitty it comes from the (this) government. Sigh.
Anyway... she listened to a few Ted Talks on the bus on the way back and pointed me to one I hadn't seen: David Pogue, When it comes to tech, simplicity sells. If you get through the lousy song he opened with, you'll laugh like crazy. A few gems:
Someone called tech support at Apple and said the mouse was squeaking. It squeaks when I move it across the screen. Why are you moving it across the screen? Well, it said click here?
More tech. support: I can't turn off the computer. I got an error and I can't restart even if I type 11. Why are you typing 11? It says "Error type 11".
Why do you shut down a Windows PC by clicking a button called "Start"?
Why do you have to scroll down a menu at the shutdown screen when there are only four options?
PalmOne has empoyees in charge of "tap counting". No task on the Palm Pilot can be more than 3 taps away.
A short while ago I listened to a Ted Talk called "Five dangerous things you should let your children do." It was fun. Today I read a post on Open Education on the same topic and got thinking about that again. I watched the Talk again.
Gever Tulley, who runs a summer school where fourth graders play with power tools and "come back pretty bloody and scraped" suggests children should learn to manage dangerous and unsafe things by actually getting to experience them. How else do you learn, someone could say?
Here's his list:
Play with fire: I did it. I was allowed to light the fireplace on my own, taught to do it by my father and did it in bonfires in friends' farms. I learned how to "control fire" and feel proud of doing it. Check. Thanks, mom and dad!
Own a pocket knife: I was given my first pocket knife by my mom. It was actually just a blade. I was allowed to play with it all the time. Even throwing it at stuff in the back yard (stuff... never people, plants or animals). My parents, cousins and uncles always taught me to cut away from my body and be careful with knifes. They let me play with it and tended my cuts when I made a mistake and cut myself. I know how to use a knife. Thanks, mom and dad!
Throw a spear: I don't remember throwing spears except javelins in phys. ed. class in middle school. However I was allowed to own and play with a sling, throw rocks and participate in the greatest "guerras de bodoques" with my neighboorhood friends. I don't have good aim, but this was all a lot of fun. It sometimes hurt and I got bruises, but it was great fun! Thanks, mom and dad!
Deconstruct appliances: I was never a big fan of breaking things appart. I actually do it more now than before. But I did my share of damage. My cousin has always been awesome at it and always had projects: a home-built remote control car, radios, etc. I slept over and played with his deconstructed appliances. I also learned how to use power tools with my dad, not putting things appart but fixing them. He taught me how to use a drill, a hammer, a saw, an electric saw. I still enjoy "bricolage" and do some things. I am proud of my toolbox and recently bought my own drill. I also played with the old car, the Renault 6, since I was about 12, seeing how they fixed it and eventually fixing simple things in it myself. Later, when I owned my own motorcycle, I had to learn how to fix the carburator, the clutch and many other things, mostly by tinkering with it and breaking it. Thanks, mom and dad!
Break the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act): No comment.
Which is the second part of 5: Drive a car: My mom took me out driving since I was about twelve. The city was smaller and there were very empty streets close to home. On weekends we went out and I drove around. When I was even younger, my mom let me shift the gears in her car while she drove. I think I'm a pretty good driver and attribute part of it to being allowed to drive since I was young. Thanks, mom! And thanks dad, who always let me drive his car, even when I crashed it (driving without a license at age 15, remember, Jaime?) and got it stolen (at age 17).
I do agree that doing these dangerous things helped learn my limits and how to cope with some level of danger. I don't break easily and feel I'm still quite tough even though I never exercise. All this helped me grow up.
I sometimes feel children are nowadays way too overprotected by their parents and supervising adults. I don't have kids... but it seems I'm not the only one who thinks that. Writing about an English organization that promotes play in children (including "dangerous" play), Open education says:
PlayEngland’s focus this year has been on one of the most traditional of child behavior’s, climbing a tree. The group found that half of children aged 7-12 years reported they were not allowed to climb a tree without adult supervision while the other half reported they had been stopped from climbing trees because it was considered to be too dangerous.
I remember being in the third or fourth grade and having lots of fun climbing a tree behind the art classrom. Me and my friends (I don't remember who were my friends back then) had about a month of fun before Alice de Cuervo, the primary school director found out we were up there and made us climb down. Years later, when I was a teacher back in the same school, the tree had been felled. I missed it. It was a beatuful evergreen with sort of a roof top where we used play when we climbed. I also used to climb lots of trees around my parent's house with my neighborhood friends. It was also great fun and nobody ever told me to climb down. When I went to the park with my mom she even helped me climb trees that were to high for me to reach on my own. Wasn't she awesome?
Today I met with Camilo, the student who has been helping me with the school website. By the end of the meeting he asked me if he could have a blog in the school website. I didn't doubt. Yes! Of course! I said. I immediately granted permissions for him to blog. He posted his first entry tonight... and some unforeseen problems came through... Today I also told him about the Sites teachers will be making, some changes in the school curriculum and the laptops we're getting for students. He blogged about that, of course, and some of it, especially the curriculum change is something the Principal and Academic Director should inform the students of, not a blog post froma peer that still has some incomplete information... possibly confusing. News fly in the blogosphere, doesn't it? The post was up for about two and half hours before I read it, and I could see some people got the chance to read it... some 15 visitors to the site. The decision wasn't easy, but I put it in the moderation queue and modified the settings so blog posts submitted by students will always be moderated before publication. Teachers and administrators will be able to override this setting, but students' posts won't be immediately publised. I feel like somewhat of a fascist, but can't see a way out. I don't think I'll have to censor students (only extreme cases would merit this), but this taught me something I should have known... I won't be able to predict or control what is published in student blogs (or any other for that matter)... sure, that is the point... I'll have to be more careful with the things I tell students before they are "officially released" and think a little more about how to manage student blogs. I don't like the hypercontrolling scheme I put up with every post requiring moderation. It think I'll have to discuss this with the principal. Students should have blogs. That's my standing. They should be allowed to talk about whatever they want... they should be able to leak information (as "real" journalists do)... but just for now, before school begins, I can't priviledge one student, however hard he has been working to get the website up and running. I guess I'm saying I'll allow unmoderated blog posts once school starts. I feel really fascist by unpublishing Camilo's post.
Esta semana empezó como una carrera. Así suelen ser las primeras semanas en los colegios. En dos días he corrido como hacía tiempo no lo hacía (literalmente, corrido de un lado para otro). Profesores nuevos necesitan que sus usuarios para la Intranet y el correo electrónico funcionen y algunos de ellos son bastante novatos en el uso de computadores. Además, hemos tenido algunos problemas preparando los sistemas que deben usar para la planeación anual y esto ha complicado las agendas. Hoy tuvimos que mover toda la agenda de dos días por esas demoras, en parte culpa mía (del mi departamento) y en parte de procesos que no están funcionando bien entre distintas áreas. Espero que mañana a primera hora pueda estar listo, pero estoy temiendo que no lo esté, pues no me han llamdo a confirmar y todavía no puedo entrar al sistema... cruzo los dedos.
Entre los cambios a las agendas, hoy hice la presentación del Plan de Tecnología que estaba preparando para mañana. Le faltaban detalles, pero estaba casi lista y pude hacerla. No funcionó perfectamente, más que nada porque el video beam no tiene demasiada luz ni el salón donde se presentó demasiada oscuridad, pero funcionó bastante bien. Recibí unos cuantos buenos comentarios. Los profesores quedaron muy contentos con la idea de que les paguemos alguiler por los portátiles personales que usan para su trabajo y con poder comprar un computador a través del proveedor que nos venda los que compraremos para los estudiantes. Creo que así les podemos conseguir muy buenos precios.
FInalmente... el tema del título... hoy estuve reunido con Camilo, el estudiante que me ha estado ayudando con la página web del colegio y me preguntó si le podía dar permiso de crear su blog en la página del colegio. No lo pensé dos veces y le di permisos de crear entradas de blog. Hace un rato vi su primera entrada, ¡qué pilera! Aunque excelente, me generó algunos problemas... en su post cuenta chismes que aún no queremos divulgar a los estudiantes sobre cambios en el colegio y algunas de las nuevas consas tecnológicas. Son noticias que deben oir de la rectora y directora académica y no como un chisme... Las maravillas del mundo de los blogs. Las noticias vuelan en la bogosfera. Para evitar problemas puse su blog en la cola de moderación mientras empieza todo y puede soltar las "chivas"... no fue una decisión fácil y me siente un poco facho.
One of the strategies I am putting together as part of the schools ed. tech. plan, is to have a few people blog. I am sure this will improve communication with parents and students, and withing the staff. The bloggers will initially be the principal, vice-principals and academic director. Aweome people to accept doing this in the first place. I will, of course, also keep a blog in the school website.
My first blog post welcomed the department heads last week and I have just posted my second entry. I used the chance to point everyone to Randy Pausch's last lecture. I just recently read he died two weeks ago. It is an awesome lecture if you haven't had the change to check it out. You can find it in my blog at the school website.
Después de mucho trabajo y con mucha ayuda de Alejandro (el ingeniero) y algunos estudiantes del colegio, especialmente Camilo Garzón, salió al aire una primera versión del nuevo portal web del Gimnasio La Montaña. La curva de aprendizaje para usar Drupal es bastante empinada y me ha tomado tiempo entender cómo funciona, pero estoy muy contento con las posibilidades de la plataforma. Aún hay mucho por hacer, pero los invito a conocer el sitio en www.glm.edu.co y enviarme sus comentarios, especialmente sobre la facilidad de navegación.
After a lot of work and a lot of help from Alejandro (the server-guy) and some students, especially Camilo Garzón, the first version of Gimnasio La Montaña's new web portal. Drupal's learning curve is pretty steep and it has taken time to understand how it works, but I'm happy withe the platform's possibilities. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I invite my readers to check it out (at www.glm.edu.co) and send me their feedback, especially in relation to the ease of navigation (usability). Thanks!
Through Stephen Downe's olDaily I got interested in an article about educational uses of peer to peer file transfer.BitTorrent: An Educational Autopsy of the Hydra by bavtuesdays. It has a good explanation of what bit-torrents is and how it works, as well as an explanation of the debates around it. I also got directed to check out a project at Harvard School of Engineering... Tribler, a p2p system that, as far as I can tell, uses bandwidth as currency (to give incentives to users who "seed"). I am about to download it and try it out. You can find it here: http://tv.seas.harvard.edu/. I have to options to download a client: Minimize upload to others and maximize download 15% or simetrical download/upload, normal speed download. I don't know what to pick. Seems weird. I get better download if I don't reciprocate? I think I'm not getting it. The FAQ says:
"If you select the right download version, the Tribler client will upload as much as it downloads. This version is "balanced" in the sense that for every piece that you want to download you also have to upload a piece of the same size. If you select the left download version, the Tribler client will optimize the file sharing algorithm to speed up your downloads, minimizing your upload to others. While this improves the speed of your personal video downloads, other users will not be able to benefit from your videos as much as with the right version which then consequently reduces their download speed."
But then it also says:
"Obviously, the upload/download ratio averaged over the whole file sharing network has to be 1:1. Thus, it is a serious problem that many users have an asymmetric Internet connection. This is one of the biggest problems with the BitTorrent protocol, where most trades happen with a tit-for-tat mechanism. Thus, even though you might have 1Mbit of download bandwidth, your 125kbit upload bandwidth prevents you from fast downloads. With virtual credits, we want to alleviate this problem. The idea is that when you leave your computer on (over night, during vacation, when you are working,...) you can earn credits such that when you actually want to download a video (or watch something on demand) you will get get the full download speed."
I have an asymmetric connection, of course. Nevertheless, I'll go for the symmetrical version of the client and upload more. I guess this decision is part of their research. I choose to share more in order to get, in the end, faster download speeds. Am I reasoning this right? Finally here's a video on Tribler:
We'd had some trouble installing Knowledge Forum on the Windows 2003 r2 server at school. Granted, the school engineer and me aren't the best qualified to do it (I've never managed a server), but we couldn't manage yesterday. Today, Alejandro, one of our contract programmers (who does know about Windows servers and pretty much administers the one at school) managed pretty quickly. Even enhanced mode worked well. I haven't been able to run lite mode, but that's another problem. I can't even run it from the KF site!
Hopefully it will be up online in about a week, as well as the new school website using Drupal. Right now both run locally. That makes me happy. I still have a lot of work to do on the website and the students who were to help me on vacation haven't come through... we'll see how much we manage to get ready for the the first week of August, when the teachers come in.
