Daniel's Reading Reflections
May 22: In-class Free Write
What can space really do in the ways of learning?
A designed space is a direct intervention into the social side of learning because it shapes the sorts of interactions that happen within it. A new space can enable interactions that weren't possible before and therefore change the relative value of existing spaces.
Consider how videoconference rooms changed the nature of remote communication, or how a theatre in the round made it possible to see the audience and the actors simultaneously. A space can make us re-evaluate our existing assumptions, which is critical to learning.
After-school programs are interesting in this light because they often reappropriate school spaces for differently structured learning activities. Even a single space can be used in different ways. In this way, a new use can challenge the established assumptions. Likewise, simply relocating 'school learning' to a different locale can reconfigure thinking processes.
We know that cognition is tightly coupled to our environment -- so changing a space, changes the minds inside it.
"Jason:" I like your forward-thinking tack. I, unfortunately went in another direction. Whether housed in a school building or not, after school programs certainly have something to offer schools. I think CBOs don't suffer from the same demands put upon schools and can therefore be more flexible within an existing space or create a new one. These programs don't have the egg crate mentality or grammar of schooling thrust upon them whereas schools must conform to the traditional idea of school.
May 11: Library Reflection
I visited the Branner Earth Sciences Library on the second floor of the Mitchell building.
The first thing that struck me upon entering the building was the central column of mineral specimens rising through the center of a spiral staircase. I'd been in this building before but never even realized there was a library upstairs. The only obvious indications I could see were the library dropbox out front and its small entry in the building directory. However, now that I knew about the library, I saw the column of minerals as a signpost coaxing me up the stairway to more and more beautiful stones and gems.
It felt a little strange to have the entrance to the library on a higher floor, and so invisible from the outside. I'm used to libraries being welcoming places that draw you in from outside. Meyer Library plays that role very well, for example.
Upon arriving at the top of the stairs I saw I was now surrounded by glass cases full of colorful minerals, each labeled with its name, chemical composition and the location where it was found.
The specimens were all very interesting for their beauty, but there seemed to be a missed opportunity to educate visitors about the uses or properties of the minerals instead of just the standard mineralogical classification -- which only a mineralogist or a taxonomist-at-heart would enjoy. Other opportunities here could be explicit comparisons between different specimens with common properties, e.g. variant forms of sulfur. That would be one way for someone who didn't know anything about minerals to gain some basic understandings of variance and commonality, learning a basic vocabulary.
The sole attempt at introducing a novice to the mineral display was a print-out, taped to the case almost as an afterthought, which answered the question "What is a mineral?"
I noticed that all the mineral labels faced the stairwell, not the library itself which offers the resources for further investigation of the specimens. As such the display becomes merely an exhibit, not a resource for mineral studies via direct observation. A better arrangement would be to allow easy connection between the physical specimens and library resources on mineralogy.
I think archives and special collections of physical artifacts are one of the most valuable and under-utilized library resources. With so much emphasis placed on books and access to information, we forget the important archival role. Ideally, every library is a universal access point to all human knowledge. But if it were only that, all libraries would be essentially identical, glorified internet cafes. Collections of rare or unique artifacts are what distinguish one library's resources from another. Also unique, as Lynn Scott Cochrane says in "If the Academic Library Ceased to Exist, Would We Have to Invent it?", are locally-produced information resources like monographs, essays, photographs, artworks, etc. Both of the other articles on libraries call for a "diffuse" digital model of libraries, that views them more as a means to accessing world-widely available information instead of being stewards of unique, local collections.
'''April 5 reading reflection on How People Learn
From Chapter 2 of How People Learn:
- Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed by novices.
- Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is organized, and their organization of information reflects a deep understanding of the subject matter.
- Experts' knowledge cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or propositions but, instead, reflects contexts of applicability, i.e., it is "conditionalized."
- Experts are able to retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little attentional effort.
- Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not guarantee that they are able to instruct others about the topic.
- Experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approaches to new situations.
We normally think of expertise as pertaining to a particular field of knowledge, like math or accounting. But it extends also to the interplay of mental and physical expertise: basketball is strategy plus dexterity. It occurs to me that one can also be an expert without a "subject matter". One can be an expert of one's space; and this space could be highly unique. It could be that one sign of an expert's space is its peculiar attunement to the idiosyncracies of its user. I'm thinking of a shop foreman or my father on his sailboat, where everything is always in its right place. My father's sailing expertise is largely a function of his space being organized in a particular way and his expert ability to use it and worth within it. This connects directly to Roy Pea's work on distributed intelligence, where intelligence emerges from the "collaboration" of people and their built environments.
Deb Kim "Daniel, I really enjoyed your reflection and addition of being an expert of a space and interaction. Two thing not explicitly recognized by the How People Learn chapter. I believe it points out that there is still much to understand about this dichtomy they've laid out that may have many more dimensions and perhaps lay on a continuum or sorts."
Because an expert's space may be finely tuned to an idiosyncratic user, does that mean it's difficult to transfer this expertise to other spaces? Does an expert chef get lost in someone else's kitchen? Another quote from How People Learn:
"Experts' abilities to reason and solve problems depend on well-organized knowledge that affects what they notice and how they represent problems. Experts are not simply "general problem solvers" who have learned a set of strategies that operate across all domains."
Spaces that organize activities are essentially "problem representations." They are ways to organize knowledge and tasks spatially.
Deb Kim "Transfer is definitely another notion that could and must be further explored in relation to this theory of novice: experts"
April 12 reflection on a good museum visitation experience
The Exploratorium in San Francisco stands out in my memory as a wonderful museum experience. I still recall exploring it as a child and being so enamored by how deeply and tangibly I could participate in scientific phenomena. It made science real to be able to manipulate sand patterns, water patterns, light patterns, sound patterns, with my own two little hands.
These experiences escaped the schooled framing of science as "knowledge", as intellectual ideas to be tossed around in the head, weighed against one another as equations on a chalkboard. The museum re-framed science as direct experience of the physical world of causes and effects, to be tossed around in the hands, played with, experimented upon, pushed around and manipulated within the controlled guides of each small exhibit.
Exhibits almost always were low-budget, at the scale of a garage project, making them very approachable and even reproducible. Returning years later, I find almost all the same exhibits I knew form 20 years ago, still functioning, still just as fascinating to grown-up me. They're so humble in their presentation, without fancy aesthetics, that they become timeless. The sheer multitude of them assures that no one can see it all in a day. And they are scattered around like toys on a playground, easily approached, peripherally toyed with, abandoned for something new or investigated deeper. A single exhibit can capture your attention and absorb you for an hour, easily. Others get 10 seconds. Every visitor is free to self-direct purely according to interest and whimsy. It is simply a delightful place.
Mark I liked your description and understanding of the exploratorium. It's really interested to me as a transplant that not only the approach to exhibits, but some of the same exhibits themselves have remained unchanged for 20 years. That does say something about their enduring ability to teach. I used to work in a natural history museum in philadelphia which had the majority of exhibits built in the 1880s. However, there were a few that were built in the 1960s-- and the latter looked far more dated. At the same time, the timeless earlier displays were nothing like the exploratorium. What they did, they did well-- showing the amazing diversity of nature, and the relatively new systematic organization based on evolutionary processes etc. One of the things I wonder about is whether exploratorium-type experiences can be combined with other approaches. In the museum world, there were often firmly entrenched camps that believed in the absolute rightness of one way of learning, but I think it has much to do with what is being learned. I certainly appreciate the garage-y feeling of the exploratorium and the approachability that it seems to engender.
Nuree Choe Daniel, your enjoyment of the musuem really shines in your description of the Exploratorium. It makes me want to stop what I'm doing and take a very long study break there. You wrote that the exhibits were at the scale of a garage project. Do you think you would have had as much fun and good memories from it had the sapce and exhibits were designed differently? Do you think it is possible that a science museum can still be approachable and fun in a more formal and less haphazard space? Out of curiosity, how old were you when you first visited as a child and how often have you gone since your first visit?
Alex Bernadotte Daniel, as I was reading your description of the Exploratorium, it occurred to me that I don’t really have any vivid memories of my early museum visits. Growing up and attending school in Boston, I’m sure I visited quite a few museums. There was the Museum of Science, the New England Aquarium (ok, not a museum but I still remember the visit) and the… Those are really the only two that I can even remember. I wonder if my memories are so vague because of the way in which the museums were designed. I wonder if I would be able to write a description as thick as the one you wrote if I had had the chance to experiment, play with and manipulate the exhibits in much the same way you did. Certainly, it appears as if there were some missed learning opportunities. You have inspired me so I am going to head to the Exploratorium very soon!
Daniel Thanks for the comments, everybody. I first went to the Exploratorium when I was probably 5 years old. I hadn't been there since junior high when I went with some Japanese visitors last quarter. It was a nice trip down memory lane. In contrast to that experience, I visited a science museum in Tokyo in January, which was a much more refined, formal space -- full of super-high-tech. Surprisingly I felt much more in-touch with the Exploratorium's exhibits because there wasn't as much mediating technology between me and the tangible phenomena.