- How People Learn, Executive Summary
One thing I kept thinking about was how different your design would have to be if you had a teacher or guide in your space, versus not having one. In particular, how do you do assessment if you're not actually there to assess the learners? How do you correct misconceptions? How do you help learners generate their own problems, and make sure that they have the tools necessary to solve them?
I don't know how I feel about the finding that learners must be "mindful of themselves as a learner and thinker." I've never felt this way about myself before, at least not explicitly. Have any of you? I guess I'm not really sure what they mean by this, and why it's so necessary. I think it's more important just to have a goal, motivation, and (as the authors mention) strategies for learning.
With the emphasis on the importance of social learning, I started to wonder, is there such a thing as an individual learning space? Is it possible to re-design your own learning space so you learn better in it? How would you go about doing that?
Would it be possible to design a learning space where the students could learn content and skills, while the teacher(s) could learn about teaching?
Dan Gilbert Great idea in your last bullet here, sounds like an opportunity to explore further in this course.
- How People Learn, Chapter 2, How Experts Differ from Novices
I thought the idea of conditionalizing knowledge was really interesting--I hadn't thought of it, because it's something we do without thinking. I think that for better or worse we make certain assumptions about when learners are ready to begin conditionalizing their own knowledge. How do we know when it's okay to break it to someone who's studied Newtonian physics that those laws break down at the atomic level? Why do some cultures teach the equations first, the concepts later, and others vice versa? Is one way better than the other? What does this mean for us as learning space designers?
I like the idea of "accomplished novices." I think this sums up the role of a curriculum designer as a translator of expertise.
Is there any way you could turn the experiments described in the chapter into assessments to determine how far along the path to expertise the learners have progressed?
If we have to begin with the knowledge each and every learner brings, that gets really complicated really fast. I can see where creating personae will be very important to learning space, or really any learning design.
I hope we're all making it our goal to become virtuoso designers! ;)
Dan Gilbert Nice work here, thanks for sharing. I too like accomplished novices because it sounds like a level that I can reach in multiple fields. Expertise, while important, is also often limiting as in we believe people are 'good at one thing, not good at another' I believe our role as learning desingers is to be accomplished novices in curriculum design, learning theory, organizational administration, technologies, etc. Good work here.
- Rogoff, B. (2003). The Cultural Nature of Human Development, Pp 37 - 62.
I loved the white bears in Novaya Zemlya example. I think the real challenge is checking our assumptions when working with a culture we think we're familiar with. We should also be careful about overcompensating for cultural difference, and about not substituting superficialities (ie., 1/3 of a pie vs. 1/3 of a tortilla...) for an attempt at real cultural understanding.
I like the quote from Margaret Mead, "passing moments of shared activity, which may or may not have explicit lessons for children, are the material of development." it makes me think about studies on how children who are read to have a much easier time learning to read, even though their parents weren't explicitly teaching them how.
I'm still not quite sure how Rogoff would define "culture" (apparently, we get to find out in ch. 3). but i think she'd like this summary of the wikipedia definition-- that culture equals human activity, and the value a particular group assigns to that activity. this presents a big challenge for education, considering a particular activity can be valued in a completely different way not just between national or ethnic groups, but between groups in the same town, school, or even classroom!
The section on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development made me think about whether or not children would be comfortable or want to pursue activities that would be impossible to do on their own. I think they probably would because these activities are inherently more challenging. But I also think that a lot depends on the other children/adults/tools they are working with.
Dan Gilbert All good worthwhile points, I hope you are able to reference these in future work that you do. I think that Rogoff would say that cultures can be as granular as two people who are connected in some way.
- Brown, Malcolm. Learning Space Design, Theory and Practice Educause Review, vol 40 no. 4 July/August 2005
I'm a big advocate of tutors and consultants in the learning space. My college actually had a great setup where there were always writing and subject area tutors available in the area outside the computer labs in the library. That way, you could work independently, but then the tutors were right there in case you needed help.
What does Brown mean by "integrated lab facilities"? What kind of labs? Integrated with what?
access to primary resources/sources! don't get me started. it is impossible to provide learners with experience with real world problems if they don't at least have some sense of what materials they'd be working with in the real world.
it seems like a minor point, but having done a lot of group work here and for my previous jobs, being able to look at the same screen and edit the same document are crucial. we spend a lot of time talking about making knowledge visible, but we're usually talking about the content that's being taught. i think making the knowledge and feedback of your collaborators visible and comprehensible is just as important, and a crucial element of group collaboration.
Dan GilbertNice reflection on nature of collaboration. Many things are just in infancy, including this wiki tool!