The real WHY for Literacy is about creating a more just and equitable society for all.
Narissa Leung reflects upon the power of books to build empathy and diverse experiences.
Tag: Spaces
Seams aren’t just connection points, they are the space where the connections are made. Not every connection needs a seam, but, where seams exist, meaning, memory, and “what matters” can as well.
Seams are the holding points for systems. They give legibility to the exchanges being made. The Japanese craft of Kintsugi is an art of repairing ceramics by using gold in the cracks, to make the seams visible, and beautiful. Kintsugi is literally “golden joinery.”
I was reading Greg Thompson’s introduction to The Education Assemblage. I was left wondering about space as a component of the assemblage.
Concepts, for Deleuze, are more than ideas – they are novel incursions into creation that exist in combination, a concept is defined by its components.
If an assemblage always ‘exist for purposes’, what does this mean for a concept? Just as Stanley Fish says that ‘a sentence is never not in a context’ I wonder if a space is always understood as a part of an assemblage even if we are not always aware of the various components? For Steve Collis it is about the physical, information and shared social. I wonder how this lens is limited and if such a framework is always itself incomplete?
Mistakes are made, even in politics. Sometimes it is what we learn from such situations. However, it seems that it is easier to turn to the blame game. At the moment the heat is being applied to Daniel Andrews in response to hotel quarantine and Victoria’s second wave. However, on the flip side the federal government have their part to play with the issues around aged care.
“Aged care residents account for 68% of all COVID-19 deaths in Aus, despite being just 1% of the population” – think we already knew the system was failing older people, but could it be more stark than this? Change starts with de-privatisation https://t.co/fTkPx4EayM #COVID19Aus
— Kate O’Halloran (@Kate_ohalloran) August 12, 2020
This all leaves me thinking about Venkatesh Rao’s Internet of Beefs.
The coronavirus crisis is forcing white-collar America to reconsider nearly every aspect of office life. Some practices now seem to be wastes of time, happily discarded; others seem to be unexpectedly crucial, and impossible to replicate online. For workers wondering right now if they’re ever going back to the office, the most honest answer is this: Even if they do, the office might never be the same.
Clive Thompson breaks down a number of stories and challenges associated with the move to remote working. He explores how sales has moved online, with adjustments to the pitches, including a focus on lighting and virtual background. He unpacks the changes associated with balancing work and personal in the same space. A key part of this is the use of a range of productivity tools and adjustments to the way we work.
Like Estenson, they had, over weeks of experimentation, begun to recognize and adjust to the strengths and weaknesses of their various communications tools. Zoom meetings carried a whiff of formality, since they were preplanned — with a link to join sent around — so it felt like filing into a conference room: useful for talking business, but a bit stiff for batting around ideas between two people. So, for quick, one-to-one talks, they gravitated to a feature in Slack that enables video calls between two users. Someone who saw a colleague logged into Slack — signaled by a green dot beside the name — could instantly request a video chat. It was more like popping your head over a cubicle wall unannounced, to engage a colleague in an impromptu two-minute confab. Tracy Coats, the company’s director of partnerships, said she had become an ardent fan of this practice.
The reality is that remote work can present a certain paradox. You can feel removed from colleagues even while drowning in digital messages from them. Associated with this, many feel fatigue due to the preformative aspects of being a part of video conferences all day long.
Video chat also makes it harder to achieve “synchrony,” a sort of unconscious, balletic call-and-response that emerges when two people are in the same room. In this situation, we often mimic someone’s body posture without realizing it and scrutinize tiny bits of facial timing — noticing, say, when the other person is about to smile.
Another problem is that there is more effort required when online.
Research suggests that people find it harder to build cohesion and trust online. David Nguyen says his academic research found that “in a videoconferencing situation, trust is actually quite fragile.” Work by him and others in the field shows that people more readily form cooperative bonds when they are face to face, whereas in video “trust is diminished overall,” he says. “Trust grows a little slower than in face-to-face conditions.”
This is something that Mike Caulfield touches on in regards to the delivery of content.
It is interesting to consider this alongside Ben WIlliamson and Anna Hogan’s work in regards to the evolution of the global education industry during the pandemic.
The cosmic horizon defining our observable universe is a hard limit. We can’t see beyond it, and unless our understanding of the structure of reality changes drastically, we can be confident we never will. The expansion of the cosmos is speeding up; anything beyond our horizon now will be carried away from us faster and faster, and its light will never be able to catch up. While we might never be able to say with certainty what lies beyond that border, what all the theories have in common is that our observable universe is part of a much, much larger space.
Whether that space contains a multiverse of bubbles, each with different physical laws; whether it’s part of an ever-growing cosmos of which we are only one part, in one cycle; or whether space extends outward in directions we can’t conceive, we currently just don’t know. But we’re seeking clues.
The patterns in the cosmic microwave background light, the distribution of galaxies, and even experiments testing gravity and the behaviour of particle physics are giving us insight into the fundamental structure of the Universe, and into its evolution in its earliest moments. We are getting closer and closer to being able to tell our whole cosmic story. We can already see, directly, the fire in which our universe was forged, the moments just after its beginning. With the clues we are gathering now, we might, someday, follow the story all the way to its end.
In an extract from Katie Mack’s book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), she unpacks our understanding of the size and space of the universe and whether in fact there are multiverses at play.
I recently had the pleasure of being invited onto the Atomi Brainwaves podcast on the topic of Innovation in Learning Design.
The timing is excellent because after 4 years of working with commercial organisations, I’m delighted to be bringing some of my focus back to schools and learning. The episode was recorded about 6 days into the COVID lockdown.
Steve Collis spoke on the Atomi Brainwaves podcast about her journey in regards to learning and innovation. Reflecting on his experiences, Collis talks about the importance of creating the culture of change at the top. For him, this came through messages, such as ‘do then think’ and ‘ready fire aim’. This was about doing small changes which could then be incorporated into the daily practice along the way. This is in contrast to spending months preparing change for the following year. (An example of such learning experiences was the decision one year to have the first two days to be without teachers.)
For Collis, the big challenge he faced was reimagining the human journey. A key to this was breaking the traditional approaches to education and differentiation – what John Goh calls our ‘default’ – where each lesson involves three different groups/levels that often succeed as teachers work so hard to make it work. The problem with this is that it treats learning as a linear process that runs to strict time and place.
To help make better sense of this change, Collis spoke about the Touchline Model to capture the current state of play and how we might change it. This involves unpacking three structures: physical structure, information structure and our shared social structure. Here is a summary from the Amicus website:
When working with Amicus’s People and Culture consultants the first thing that is achieved is a direction-setting module which covers our report and design-briefing document, we take into consideration all three touchlines in an integrated fashion. This means in practice that we unpack your aspirations for the move into practical implications for not just the physical space, but also the information space (e.g. your technology toolkit) and organisation space (e.g. routines, meetings, spatial protocols). The goal for any new workspace should be a capitalisation on what you can truly achieve. The office lease or motivation to move only rolls around every 5 years or so, so ensure your organisation makes the most of it.
He also talks about the model in his presentation at DEX 2019 conference.
#Sketchnotes from @steve_collis‘s workshop at #DEX2019. Context creates the moment. https://t.co/sW25TIsiI7 #digitalworkplace #UX #employeeexperience #physicalexperience #design #context pic.twitter.com/hRuDLXlfqr
— Rebecca Jackson 😏 #M365May 🤓 レベッカ (@_rebeccajackson) September 18, 2019
Another important ingredient to change is the design for emergence. This is where teachers design deliberate constaints. Often the argument is made against ‘direct instruction’ and specific information, however the issue is not the instruction, but the fact that such instruction is not at the point of need. Collis spoke about the use of flipped instruction and providing students more choice and autonomy as to when they accessed this information. Therefore, such shared learning narratives often involved a number of choices or spaces. This often included a help desk which was run by both teachers and peers. Where such spaces differ to the open planned movements of the past is the place of technology to make such learning more doable. This includes both Google Docs and writable surfaces. With all of this, the question is always about finding the right balance. He discusses this further in his TED Talk.
Associated with leadership, Collis touched on the fact that it is easier to drive change when there is nothing to lose. For example, this is at the heart of Templestowe College’s success. It is also interesting to think about this in regards to Simon Breakspeare’s work with Agile Schools. However, Collis also touched on the risk of trauma about changing too much too fast. For me, the danger of coming up too fast is that we risk getting the bends. In this respect I guess leadership is also knowing when to pull the break. See for example Richard Wells decision to press pause on the move to reimagine learning in the school he is in.
I feel that we are all made up of different fragments of self often existing in different spaces. One easily overlooked is the private space. A plot of land often left fallow. For example, the personal diary. As Austin Kleon suggests, such a medium offers a good place to have bad ideas:
I find that my diary is a good place to have bad ideas. I tell my diary everything I shouldn’t tell anybody else, especially everyone on social media. We are in a shitty time in which you can’t really go out on any intellectual limbs publicly, or people — even your so-called friends! — will throw rocks at you or try to saw off the branch. Harsh, but true.
Personally speaking, I find the challenge is that such spaces are the last to get tended to, yet often the most important in regards to mental health.
In discussing Melbourne’s lockdown, there is a lot of references to ‘ring-fencing‘. What I don’t get is how you ring-fence something that does not necessarily have clear boundaries. Initially, the attempt was to shut-down particular suburbs. Now, this has been increased too all of ‘Melbourne’. The problem with this is Melbourne is not a castle with a wall around it. Although police are patrolling the suburbs, it feels as if such restrictions are in the mind as they are physical. In the end, getting on top of this is about people and choices made, not about imaginary spaces.
Colin Walker (colinwalker.blog)It seems likely I’ll be working from home until at least the end of September but this house really isn’t a good fit for that – the longer this goes on the worse it gets. I see so many pieces of advice detailing how to better organise your work day, separate your work area, work in sprints and take regular breaks, but there is no room to distinguish work from home while my role is predominantly reactionary and I must be available. I have next to no control.
And then we can add to that being bombarded by continual bad news despite trying to avoid it.
The world is a roiling sea o…
I remember being told early on that you need to draw lines. If only. I have had to support our daughter who has been learning from home, while our open-planned house is not easily ‘locked off’. It is a bit different with schools returning in Australia, but a part of me wonders if this will have a return to people looking for houses with a study/work space?
We’re trying to think about the ways we can still be an inspiring space without the physical space,” Mil Mundo said. “There’s a silver lining to all of this — that we can reinvent how we talk about storytelling.”
Imagine a city where the only playgrounds or greenspace were those strip-mall “Treehouse” locations that parents rent out for kids birthday parties.
I really like your comparison with public playgrounds Glen. My wondering on the topic of ‘public spaces’ is who actually manages/moderates them? Is there a danger that if these spaces were setup and managed by the state that they would simply offer a different sort of surveillance?
I vaguly remember Greg McVerry or maybe Ian O’Byrne discussing some sort of connection between libraries and domains. However, I cannot put my finger on the link at this point in time.
Our emotions are being manipulated, hacked and shared like never before. So what does this mean for their future, our relationships and the technology that’s reading them?
Edwina Stott facilities a dive into children’s engagement with online spaces. Keith Stewart discusses the use of Fortnite as as modern skatepark where kids are able to congregate online. This reminds me of danah boyd’s point in her book It’s Complicated, that where teens may have gone to the mall in the 80’s, they have been forced online as the last refuge available:
The social media tools that teens use are direct descendants of the hangouts and other public places in which teens have been congregating for decades. What the drive-in was to teens in the 1950s and the mall in the 1980s, Facebook, texting, Twitter, instant messaging, and other social media are to teens now. Teens flock to them knowing they can socialize with friends and become better acquainted with classmates and peers they don’t know as well. They embrace social media for roughly the same reasons earlier generations of teens attended sock hops, congregated in parking lots, colonized people’s front stoops, or tied up the phone lines for hours on end. Teens want to gossip, flirt, complain, compare notes, share passions, emote, and joke around. They want to be able to talk among themselves—even if that means going online.(Page 20-21)
This episode also raises the question about the internet of things and the potential to gather emotional data. This is a topic touched upon by Ben Williamson in his book Big Data in Education.
Take a (whispered) tour of the most incredible architectural reading spaces across Australia.
📰 Read Write Respond #031
My Month of July
LinkedIn recently reminded me that it has been two years in my current position. I was shocked, time has flown. As I touched on recently, it has been a whirlwind of an experience as is the nature I imagine of working within a transformational project. The biggest lesson learnt is that in a lean environment (or at least an attempt at a lean environment) you sometimes get stuck doing what needs to be done, rather than what you may prefer to be doing, which in my case is working with teachers and schools. I am currently working on refining a scale-able implementation process associated with student reporting.
At home, the common cold came back, again. I swear we had overcome it for this season, but no. Also, new term and new song for my daughter’s school. So I think I am up to 20+ listens of Try Everything from Zootopia. Another great growth mindset anthem. Might also say something about the algorithms at play.
I am learning through practice that the easiest way to learn something is to watch and copy somebody else. Scary how quickly our youngest picks everything up. Understanding Mal Lee and Roger Broadie’s point about the young being digitally proficient by the age of three.
I attended DigiCon18. Although I went to some interesting sessions and sparktalks, what was great were the conversations in-between. This included discussing the Ultranet with Rachel Crellin, the pedagogy associated to ongoing reporting with Chris Harte, connected learning with Jenny Ashby, parenting and partnerships with Lucas Johnson, implementing the Digital Technologies curriculum with Darrel Branson, purpose and leadership with Riss Leung and direct instruction with Richard Olsen.
In other areas, I have been listening to Amy Shark, Florence and the Machine, DJ Shadow, The National and Guy Pearce. I started reading Adam Greenfield’s Radical Technologies. I also updated my site, moving back to ZenPress and adding in a new series of header images developed by JustLego101.
In regards to my writing, here was my month in posts:
Here then are some of the thoughts that have also left me thinking …
Learning and Teaching
Teaching Game Design with Bill Cohen (TER Podcast): Cameron Malcher interviews Bill Cohen about game-design through play-based learning. Cohen goes beyond the usual coding and computer-aided approaches to focusing on ‘low-tech’ games. This included engaging with board games and outdoor games. This play-based approach focuses on developing clear metalanguage, feedback for mastery and working with an iterative design process. This reminds me in part of Amy Burvall’s notion of ‘rigorous whimsy‘ and BreakoutEDU. Some resources Cohen shared include Boardgame Geek and Lady Blackbird, while in a seperate post, Clare Rafferty shared a list of games associated with History. For a different take on games, in a recent episode of the IRL Podcast, Veronica Belmont and Ashley Carman take a look at gamification in everyday life. Some examples of this include notifications on smartphones, likes and retweets on Twitter or the endorsements on Linkedin.
If there is one thing that I have learnt as a teacher is that nothing leaches out fun more than dropping a layer of education over the top of it – Bill Cohen
Encountering harmful discourses in the classroom: Ian O’Byrne discusses the challenges of engaging in harmful discourses. He provides some ways to responding, as well as a number of ways to be proactive. This touches on what danah boyd describes as the weaponisation of worldviews.
Howard C. Stevenson from Penn’s Graduate School of Education indicates three steps to address these harmful discourses as they enter your classroom.
- Start with you – Process your own feelings, and address your own vulnerabilities before entering the classroom. Develop a support system with your colleagues.
Practice – Classroom reactions usually happen in a split second. Prepare yourself for these instances by role-playing with colleagues in your building, or online with your PLN.- After an incident – Resist the urge to condemn the action or content. First try to understand the motivation if is disseminated through your classroom or building. Allow the school’s code of conduct to address instances where students actively spread this information. Strongly explain to students that these harmful discourses and the messages being spread about individuals and groups are not accepted. You will not accept the silencing of voices.
- Keep talking – After these events, the best course of action is to keep talking. Difficult discussions will often ensue, but children and adults alike need to be able to process their feelings and reactions. This is an opportunity to shut down and be silent, or engage and promote change.
How well do we ‘face up to’ racism?: Anna Del Conte provides some take-aways from a course on racism. Some of the activities included what racism is, a timeline of diversity in Australia and listening to stories. Another resource I am reminded of is Dan Haesler’s interview with Stan Grant. In part this stemmed from Grant’s speech addressing racism.
Multiculturalism is not an outcome but a process. Racism may not be deliberate BUT anti-racism is always deliberate.
Can Reading Make You Happier?: Ceridewn Dovey takes a look at bibliotherapy and the act of reading as a cure. Some argue that readers are more empathetic, while others suggest that it provides pleasure, whatever the particular outcome maybe, reading has shown to provide many health benefits. As Kin Lane suggests, when in doubt, read a book. Zat Rana suggests that this reading is not about being right or wrong, but rather about being open new ideas and lessons.
So even if you don’t agree that reading fiction makes us treat others better, it is a way of treating ourselves better. Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers. “Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines,” the author Jeanette Winterson has written. “What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.”
Historic Tale Construction Kit – Bayeux: This site allows users to recreate the Bayeux Tapestry. Clearly this is a great resource for history students, but it is also an interesting approach to storytelling.
Two German students originally wrote the Historic Tale Construction Kit, with Flash. Sadly, their work isn’t available anymore, only remembered. This new application is a tribute, but also an attempt to revive the old medieval meme, with code and availability that won’t get lost.
Edtech
Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet: Chris Aldrich provides an introduction to webmentions. This includes unpacking the specification, the notion of mentions, the idea of kinds and way in which sites are potentially able to connect two-ways. This continues Aldrich’s efforts to document the IndieWeb, which has included a thorough overview of the IndieWeb, the future of feed readers and reimagining academic research. This introduction is different to Aaron Parecki’s guide to sending your first webmentions or breakdown of the oAuth standard.
Breaking down the walls between the internet’s many social silos, Webmentions offer a new level of freedom for web interactions.
Twenty Years of Edtech: Martin Weller looks back at twenty years of EdTech, highlighting the various moments that have stood out across the journey. This brings together many of the pieces that he has written for his 25 years of EdTech series that he has written to celebrate 25 years of ALT. As he points out in his introduction, we are not very good at looking back. This post then offers an opportunity to stop and do so in a structured manner. Another interesting take on history is Ben Francis’ post on the Firefox OS.
What has changed, what remains the same, and what general patterns can be discerned from the past twenty years in the fast-changing field of edtech?
Learning To Code By Writing Code Poems: Murat Kemaldar discusses the connections between coding and poetry. He re-imagines the various rules and constructs in a more human form. This continues a conversation started between Darrel Branson, Tony Richards and Ian Guest on Episode 234 of the Ed Tech Team Podcast about whether everyone should learn poetry and coding. This is also something Royan Lee shares.
In all languages, there is probably a word for love. You kinda know what it means, but not really, because it is so subjective. But still, there is a word for it. But in JavaScript, there is no “love,” until you say there is. It can be whatever you want it to be.
18 best practices for working with data in Google Sheets: Ben Collins provides a guide for working with data in Google Sheets. Some of the useful steps that stood out were documenting the steps you take, adding an index column for sorting and referencing, creating named ranges for your datasets and telling the story of one row to check the data. This is all in preparation for his new course on data analysis. Another tip I picked up from Jay Atwood has been to import data, if moving from Excel to Sheets, rather than simply copying and pasting.
This article describes 18 best practices for working with data in Google Sheets, including examples and screenshots to illustrate each concept in action.
Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags: Cory Doctorow provides a commentary on the current state of affairs involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Rather than blame the citizens of the web, he argues that the fault exists with the mechanics in the garage and the corruption that they have engaged with. The question that seems to remain is if this is so and we still want our car fixed, where do we go? Doctorow has also recorded a reading of the article.
It’s fashionable to treat the dysfunctions of social media as the result of the naivete of early technologists, who failed to foresee these outcomes. The truth is that the ability to build Facebook-like services is relatively common. What was rare was the moral recklessness necessary to go through with it.
How the Blog Broke the Web: Amy Hoy reflects on the early days of publishing on the web, where people would handcraft pages and connect them using a contents page. This was superseded by Moveable Type and the chronological blog, subsequently killing off the non-diariest. I was not really engaged in the web back then so it is hard to comment as Jeremey Keith, Duncan Stephen and Kicks Condor have, but it does remind me of the current debates around blogging. I think that all these spaces are forever changing and developing. Sometimes this is based on wholesale changes, but usually people have their own particular reason. Maybe some people will drop off with Gutenberg, but then again sometimes these things have their day.
Movable Type didn’t just kill off blog customization. It (and its competitors) actively killed other forms of web production.
Are We Listening?: Jose Picardo argues that the question about whether we should have more or less technology in schools misses the point. What matters is how it is used. For example, those who argue for more knowledge often fail to put the effort into actually understanding how technology is used in education. This comes back to the importance of why and having a framework to guide you. For a different perspective on technology in the classroom, read David Perry’s thread.
The very teachers who read William and nod vigorously about the need to know stuff before you can understand or do stuff in the context of curriculum are unable to draw parallels between their dismissal of digital technology and their own lack of knowledge about it. Rather than finding virtuosity and pride in learning about how what technology works best and in what context—so as to be able to discern the best tool for particular tasks—we seem happy to eschew whole new toolkits on the dodgy grounds of ignorance and misconception.
Storytelling and Reflection
Throwing Our Own Ideas Under the Bus: Ross Cooper discusses the idea of putting your worst foot forward taken from Adam Grant’s book Originals. This involves trusting the idea at hand and starting with reasons why it might fail. Cooper suggests that this can be useful as it disarms the audience, critique involves effort, helps to build trust and leaves audience with a more favourable assessment. He also looks at this alongside Simon Sinek’s concept of ‘start with why’, highlighting the reason why and the challenges that might be faced. I wonder if the challenge in focusing on the why and why not is about finding balance? This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s discussion of Generous Orthodoxy.
As an elementary school principal, here’s the approach I’ve been taking with change: “Here’s what we’re doing, here’s why we’re doing it, and here are some of the ways I will support you!” Now I’ll be toying around with the idea of also proactively addressing the elephants in the room. Furthermore, we should allow for teachers and staff to respectfully and honestly discuss these obstacles, as opposed to us trying to sweep them under the rug. After all, flaws will be talked about in one way or another, and critical conversation that gives everyone a voice is preferred to potential venting in the faculty room.
The future will be dockless: could a city really run on ‘floating transport’?: Alex Hern discusses the rise of floating transport, something that I touched on recently with the demise of oBike in Melbourne. Hern captures a number of stories from around the world of hope for efficiency, but also issues associated with shared spaces. I am taken by Hern’s closing remarks concerning reliability over flexibility. This leaves me thinking that sometimes what is required is community and sometimes that involves patience. What is the cost to the public/private transport industry when everyone relies on private personal transport models like Bird or Uber?
Ultimately, floating transport is going to have to learn another lesson that conventional transportation bodies have taken to heart: flexible may be fun, but cities run on reliable.
i am sorry: Pernille Ripe reflects on life as a connected educator. She discusses the stress, anxieties and perceived responsibilities that come with being an educelebrity. Although we often talk about the technicalities associated with being (digitally) literate, what is sometimes overlooked are the social consequences. This is something that Austin Kleon also recently reflected upon.
So it is time for me to step back a bit. To do less work publicly, to share less, to not be so immediately available. To be just Pernille, the person who doesn’t have all of the answers necessarily. That only creates something because she cannot help it. That gives all of her when she is in a public space, but then steps back when she is private.
Facebook’s Push for Facial Recognition Prompts Privacy Alarms: Natasha Singer discusses Facebook’s continual push for facial recognition. She traces some of the history associated with Facebook’s push into this area, including various roadblocks such as GDPR. She also looks at some of the patent applications. This made me wonder how many patents actually come to fruition and how many are a form of indirect marketing? Elsewhere, Doug Levin explains why facial recognition has no place in schools, especially the way Curtin University is using it.
Cameras near checkout counters could capture shoppers’ faces, match them with their social networking profiles and then send purchase confirmation messages to their phones.
The anti-cottonwool schools where kids stare down risk in favour of nature play: This article from the ABC discusses a couple of schools in Western Australia that have reduced the rules on outdoor play. This reminds me of Narissa Leung’s use of old bricks and Adrian Camm’s use of odd material to engage with play.
Mr Smith said whereas students would previously come to the office complaining of injury, they are now too busy to make a fuss. “Students are becoming more resilient and getting on with it.” The school has just three rules — no stacking milk creates, no walking on the large wooden spools and no tying rope to yourself.
The Dangers of Distracted Parenting: Erika Christakis discusses the challenges of parenting in a digital age. This all comes down to distractions and as I have touched on before, this is not always digital. I really like danah boyd’s strategy for dealing with this, that is to say why you are using a device. This openness offers a useful point of reflection. I think that the conclusion to this article says it all though, “put down your damned phone.”
Parents should give themselves permission to back off from the suffocating pressure to be all things to all people. Put your kid in a playpen, already! Ditch that soccer-game appearance if you feel like it. Your kid will be fine. But when you are with your child, put down your damned phone.
FOCUS ON … SPACE
I was recently challenged on the place of space in regards to learning. I recorded a microcast on the topic, but I haven’t had the chance to put all my thoughts together. In the interim, I have collected together a number of posts on the topic. If you have any others to add to the mix, I would love to read them.
- Imagining Different Learning Spaces: Jon Corripo provided his suggestions for redesigning a classroom space which again sparked my imagination.
- Flexible Seating: What’s the Point?: Chris Wejr reflects on his experiences in reviewing flexible learning spaces. This includes the reasons to re-design, as well as a series of thoughts associated with the process of re-imagining.
- Why I Hate Classroom Themes: Emily Fintelman reflects on classroom themes and wonders what impact they are really having on learning. She suggests that our focus should be on how spaces are structured and strategies that can be used to give students more voice.
- Flexible Classrooms: Research Is Scarce, But Promising: What is interesting about this report is that rather than discussing furniture in isolation, it is considered as a part of a wider conversation about learning and environment. The impact of flexible spaces though can be almost incidental at times, as is with the case of Maths. This speaks of agency as much as it does of the chairs in the classroom.
- Adding the Learning Back to Space: A reflection on an outdoor learning space and the potential of technology to increase learning and engagement.
- Benefits of Flexible Learning Spaces #1 Teaching in Teams: Stephen Rowe explains that teachers working in teams is a significant benefit that arises from teaching in an open learning space.
- Designing Learning Spaces – putting the cart before the horse: June Wall and Jonathon Mascorella define learning environments as a set of physical and digital locations, context and cultures in which students learn.
- Learning Space Design Inspiration: Steve Brophy collects together a number of ideas and inspirations associated with learning spaces.
- Beanbags in Space: Matt Esterman suggests that what most teachers want is a more shiny version of what they have, because they are not trained as designers (usually) and are so often hemmed in by the expectations of current reality.
- Inquiry, noticing and the changing seasons… A tribute to the late Frank Ryan: Kath Murdoch reflects on the potential of the environment associated with inquiry.
- Coalescent Spaces: Dave White considers the impact of digital technologies on the creation of coalescent learning spaces.
- Seeing Spaces: Bret Victor reimagines the makerspace built around tinkering and argues that it is in ‘seeing’ that we are able to make this a science.
- Communities, Networks and Connected Learning with Google: Technology enables us to easily develop digital communities and networks inside and outside of the classroom. The reality though is that connected learning is as much about creating spaces for learning and building on that.
READ WRITE RESPOND #031
So that is July for me, how about you? As always, interested to hear.
Also, feel free to forward this on to others if you found anything of interest, maybe you want to subscribe or buy me a coffee? Archives can be found here.
Cover image via JustLego101.
Bret Victor reimagines the makerspace built around tinkering and argues that it is in ‘seeing’ that we are able to make this a science. He talks about three forms of seeing:
- seeing inside the object being made
- seeing across time to observe the various changes
- seeing across possibilities to assess which is best solution based on data and reason
Victor elaborates on his idea here, including various sketches. Interestingly, this reminds me of John Hattie’s idea of the Visible Classrooms, where everything is recorded and analysed. This also sounds similar to AltSchool.
Jim Groom pointed out that this is roadmap for Victor’s Dynamicland project.
Jordan Erica Webber explores whether our privacy has been compromised by the tech giants whose business models depend on harvesting and monetising our data. We speak to cyborg rights activist Aral Balkan; the executive director of UK charity Privacy International Gus Hosein; and to Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired magazine and author of The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future.
In the first episode of our four-part miniseries, Jordan Erica Webber asks whether our digital selves are owned by tech firms in a new form of slavery? One of the interesting points made was that in the past, people were often private in public spaces, whereas today things have been reversed, where we are public in private places.