Freelearning

College Faculty Buy-in to Web 2.0

Much energy and discussion are put into bemoaning why faculty are so resistant to change especially in adopting Web2.0 tools.  Here are some of the impediments that I see. 

Many faculty

• have a bad impression of online courses.

• think they are already doing blended learning when they put their syllabus online and accept assignments by e-mail.

• think their status and identity depend on their having superior knowledge and cannot see themselves as teachers and learners at the same time.

• have not developed their facilitation and interaction abilities.

• don't have experience using most of the Web 2.0 tools.
  

• know less about technology than their students and don't like to appear foolish or ignorant in front of others.

• don't have a felt need to change their teaching. 

• have opinions about Wikipedia that give them a reason not to want to participate in online activities.

For change to occur, I think approaches need to:

be tailored to the faculty member's discipline,

use concrete examples from actual courses,

simplify materials beyond what most people with experience can imagine.   

We'll get farther in changing behavior if we can show how Web2.0 meets a need that faculty feel.  E.g., I want my students to

• be more involved and motivated,
• be able to reason better,
• have exposure to lab equipment we can't afford, and/or
• see the connections between class learning and their other experiences.

Alternative Paths to Educational Change

One way to organize for change in education would be to start a lobbying and politically active type group.  Chris Lehmann suggests a possible approach in his post of July 9, 2008. 

The next step -- the idea of collaborative action -- is where it gets really hard. If Will is serious about trying to use these tools to affect change -- and certainly, it's not a bad idea -- we need to start to think about organizational structure, philosophy, shared decision-making, goals, action plans, etc... it's the more mundane kind of organization building that gets hard and tiring and frustrating and often fails.

There are many comments on Chris' post.

Another approach would be to form an association for change from the ground up.  People who are already active and working into small groups would chose to join an association that supports them in their local efforts and keeps key concepts and resources in front of them. 

The first model may result in energy going into a new bureaucracy where policy is formed at the top and promulgated to lower level participants.  A typical political campaign seems to be an example of this interpretation of the activist model.  Some commenters on Chris' post seemed to have this vision.  Other commenters seemed to favor the second.  They proposed that people who are already active volunteer to join a larger group to increase the support they receive from others.  They seek to work together to create what they want to see evolve.

A third approach is to use a process like Appreciative Inquiry in a face-to-face group of people of similar interests (perhaps a smaller sized conference).  This group builds on the aspects of their work that brings them energy and "success."  It builds on the areas in which there is consensus and does not undertake activities for which no one has an affinity; no one is assigned to do something that "ought" to be done. The process grows out of the enthusiasm of the group.

Which approach suits your style more?  How would you want to get involved?

My Blog as Part of My PLE

I've been reading widely through other people's posts on personal learning environments (PLEs) from over the last 2 years.  I've also been looking at process based e-portfolios and blogs as spaces for learning.  Though I say I want freelearning and I declare I'm ready to step out on my own, I still seem to be searching for a model to follow.

One school of thought is that the learner needs to start with a problem that s/he wants to solve.  A more complex representation is by Nils Peterson et. al. who write about the use of portfolios for learning.  Goal-oriented, social, reflective, and resulting in action are some of the necessary components for successful learning. 

I re-read an interesting discussion about PLEs at Scope co-led by Derek Chirnside.  He describes his PLE as including a browser, delicious, an RSS reader, etc.  Simple and chaotic from his point of view.

Am I goal oriented?  Diverse and free ranging?  What holds my interests together?

My best learning often takes place when I spread out a vast array of ideas and then begin to sort them.  I collect ideas based on a general notion of what I want to learn.  I use a wide net.  I see relationships between things that aren't usually related e.g., an analogy from nature, a carry over from one organization type to another.  My friends get pretty overwhelmed when I think out loud and talk about this banner of ideas.  Eventually, I sort them and reach a manageable place.

Descriptions of tools and mental models of learning that people like Derek Chirnside use encourage me to invent my own approach.

I immerse myself in my topic.  I often start reading things in the middle at a place where I find resonance; then I work my way back through the material to see how it is constructed.  I look for the places where one item cross fertilizes another.  I reflect back to see what is emerging. 

I need to trust my process.

Which Colleges are Prepared for Self-directed Stludents?

Chris Lehmann on Practical Theory recently posted that one goal he anticipates for next year is getting students ready to go off to college.

I've been thinking about where students who attend learner-centered self-directed high schools with a sense of community will want to go to college.  Maybe Hampshire College has some of that atmosphere, maybe New York's Empire State.  There must be others. 

 I was recently helping a student at Union Institute and University (University Without Walls in the 1960s) to prepare for his thesis.  When he was accepted, the institution was designed to be student centered.  Because of concerns for accreditation, guidelines are much more strict now.  Rather than construct an individualized program, the student, to be interdisciplinary, needs to learn two or three individual fields.  I found myself "enforcing" the rules I have come to reject for academic evaluation.  After that realization, I wasn't able to continue supporting him in his project.  So where will students with experience in designing their own learning go to college?

My experience with home schooled children has been that if they want to, they fit into traditional institutions of higher learning.  But as their interests and skills expand I think it is a shame that they need to contract into prescribed boxes. 

For a couple days I had a fantasy of starting a university that was never to be accredited.  Accreditation seems to require the lowest common denominator.  What if college just continued in a free-style home schooling approach?  Ask members of the community with more specialized knowledge to take on kids as apprentices.  Surely the world, the community and the World Wide Web combined provide enough resources for college age to learn. 

But then I thought about how they would or wouldn't be able to get jobs in a global market place.  Degrees that are accredited are supposed to attest to some basic skill levels.  But so often they don't.  I'm reminded of the conversation I had with my brother when my kids were graduating from and looking for jobs.  He's the VP of a hospital and he said, "Give me a bright person with a good work ethic and I can teach her what she needs to do the job.  What I can't teach is a work ethic."  Students who are self-directed in their learning should be learning the basic skills this employer is looking for.

How can we balance the need students have for self-direction in the college setting and requirements of portability of a degree?  Is there assessment that could substitute for degrees?  What colleges are available now that might be responsive to the high school students who have learned to be self-directed?

Local community and open-learning

Community, Schools and Online Learning

I have an interest in Web2.0 and in building local community.  I've been feeling like I need to choose one or the other. 

Now Barbara Ganley is leaving academia and heading out to combine those two things.  bgganley writes "I see this open-learning movement on the Web (collective intelligence) coupled with in-the-lived-community-connection as a way we might actually save ourselves and our planet. I gotta get out there and try to do my part." 

I don't imagine that Barbara is referring to setting up wifi in her area.  Rather I'm guessing that she wants to use blogging and other tools she has been using in her college classrooms to build community for learning in her local community.

What are the possibilities?  If people can communicate online and build "collective intelligence," what would this enable?

At one level, people could share more.  Instead of a building that is a tool library, people could make their own tools available to others or how about an online (using pictures) jewelry or good dishes library?  Maybe a system of local currency (a la Ithaca hours) could be established.  Couldn't online collective activity make these activities easier?

Maybe a form of city/community planning would be possible.  Could people work together in a collective way online to create the community they want?  Maybe people could create private blog posts in response to some questions set forth or maybe people could interview each other about their visions for their community.  After individuals have established and shared their own ideas, how might they be shared.  Barbara's students were involved in a constant back and forth between classes f2f and communicating by writing.  Could this same process be adapted for in-the-lived-community development of trust and understanding?

Years ago (1961), Jane Jacobs wrote The Life and Death of Great Cities.  In it she described many of the characteristics of communities that work well: hanging out on porches, walking to places like stores and libraries, and experiencing diversity (e.g., income, social class, etc.)  I live in this kind of neighborhood.  We have informal contact and we work together when there is a crisis--a house burns down, a babysitter is verbally accosted by a neighbor, an ambulance arrives.  But we do not have any way of combining our collective intelligence.  Yard signs declare our political opinions and we may make general comments.  But we do not work together to get things done.

Do you live in a neighborhood that has a basic sense of community?  Or are you in an area where almost all travel is done by car and people only know one or two neighbors?  Or an area where family ties are more important than ties with neighbors?  How do you imagine developing collective intelligence using Web2.0 might impact your community?  What do you see as the possibilities?

I Found My Community

As the daffodils came out this spring, so did the neighbors.  We live on an urban block in a University area.  Many of us have replaced all or part of our front yard lawns with flower and/or vegetable beds.  We've been working on our gardens after hours, early in the morning, and on weekends--when it's not raining.  And we've been crossing the street to chat.  After the isolation of winter when we wave briefly as we dig our cars out of the snow in the morning, spring is a time of greeting and community.  (I live in a part of the country (USA) that has been described as nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding.)

I've been in this neighborhood for six years and I recently realized I know who lives in every house but two.  Some of the neighbors use their porches every day in summer.  Others prefer the back.  As I think about it, the porches that face east in the evening are used and those that face west are not--that's reasonable.  My across-the-street neighbor who faces east doesn't have a porch.  So she put two Adirondack chairs in her front yard.  I felt her action pull me toward the front of my house in the morning before the hot sun arrives.

Our block is already a community.  A recent confrontation between an outsider and a babysitter who was unable to calm a bereft child, led to neighbors in action.  Some neighbors guided the interloper away from the house, others comforted the sitter and the child.  All the neighbors had heard the child's cries and read them as normal tiredness and upset for this child.  No one was concerned that the child was being mis-treated.  We rallied round the girl and the child.  This was followed by planning for a block party.

I'm inspired by the reality of community in which I find myself.  I've always wanted to live with a sense of community without living communally.  And I discover that I am.

Is Shopping the Answer?

This week we were told that consumer spending had only risen by .1% in the past month, a very low rate compared to previous months.  The implication seems to be that the economy will fall apart because we are buying less.  After 9/11 the President told us to be patriotic and go shopping.  Do we want to live in a world in which our welfare as a nation  continues to be built on "stuff"?

Many elders find themselves wanting to pare down their belongings and to simplify.  I imagine a world in which we share the things we seldom or never use.  Art supplies that pile up, coats and sweaters we don't wear, vases we haven't used in years, desktop sorters of three kinds, and sets of plates or bowls that are tucked away and never used.  This list reveals some of my stored unnecessaries.  With passing things around, could we have more people have the things they want or need and not have lots and lots to store?

Nobel prize winner Yunus has a 2008 book out on ending  world poverty.  He was interviewed on NPR and you can find an introduction to his thoughts here.  He worked with Danone (Dannon in US) to create a social business, i.e., a business designed to make the world a better place in which investors can get their money back over time but do not make any interest.  Profits are reinvested in the company.  This approach to business would certainly avoid the mess the US economy has gotten into by having workers that push financial papers back and forth between institutions making a profit but not creating value.  What if we were instead using a significant portion of our money to make the world a better place.  Yunus provides one vision of a way forward.

Today I received a link to a YouTube video from Barack Obama's campaign about students in the South Bronx learning about politics and coming to see themselves as able to do things -- "Yes We Can."  It shows a teacher who has used Barack's speech on getting beyond race to improve discussion and understanding in his classroom.  The enthusiasm of these students brought tears to my eyes.

What institutional changes will help us get out of potentially catastrophic financial woes?  What will open us to making personal commitments that will create new conditions going forward?  What is it about this teachers way of educating that results in having excited and involved students?

The Spring Pond

Tryangulation has a post today about the freedom for children to get dirty.  In response, I want to share my recent piece on my childhood play in the mud.

The Pond

Today's Saturday.  The sun is out.  I'm in second grade.  I have on my old clothes.  It rained Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday this week.  It rained lots last week, too.  The path from our front yard to the pond is squishy.  I can see the spot where there aren't any wheels of old Queen Anne's lace.   That's where the pond is.  It always dries up by the end of the summer and then comes back in the spring. 

Last year I caught pollywogs in the pond.  Mommy gave me a Mason jar to put them in.   I watched their legs grow and their tails get smaller.  Every day I'd check to see if they looked different.  I brought them back to the pond when their legs got big.  Frogs can't live in a jar with just water and no rocks.  They'd drown.  And besides we couldn't have them jumping around in my room.

I see the pond.  Crayfish have built little clay towers.  It looks like somebody used a cake decorating tube to squeeze ruffles of mud around their holes.   The holes are big enough for a snake to crawl in. I've never seen any snakes, so far.

Over there it looks like maybe there was a building.  It's a pile of melted clay bricks.  Some come together to make a corner .  The whole mess is the color of the bottom of the pond.

I'm looking for pollywogs. 

There are tiny fish swimming in a group.  They are kind of silvery and many colored like the inside of a shell.  I don't think they're tadpoles. Tadpoles don't turn up in groups.  I see a cloud of dust in the water.  There's a crayfish.  I poke a stick in front of it to see if it will grab on.  It just swims around it. 

A pollywog is near the edge of the shallow water.  I reach around behind me to get my empty jar.  I don't want to scare it away.  As I scoop up the water, the pollywog scoots away.  I try not to get my feet wet but I want to see where it went.  Water is starting to leak in through the sides of my sneakers.  I squat down closer to the water being careful not to get all wet.  I see another pollywog with tiny knobs where its feet will be.  I quickly scoop my jar through the water.  At the last minute, the pollywog swims out of the jar. When the water clears, I watch for another pollywag. 

After two minutes, another tadpole swims near me.  I scoop with the jar and as soon as it's inside, I put my other hand over the top.  I feel the tadpole bumping into  my fingers.   I keep my hand tightly over the jar until it is out of the water.  I look.  There is nothing in the jar.

My hands are cold and my feet are cold.  Does that slimy line mean there is  a snake?  I'll come back tomorrow and bring something bigger to put over the top of the jar.

I take off my shoes outside.  .  Mommy is in the kitchen making cookies.

“What's that pile of mud that looks like bricks next to the pond?”

“That was supposed to be a building but it washed away” Mommy says.

“Why did it wash away?”

“The blocks were made with clay from the pond and grass, she said.  “They were trying to use local materials from the landscape.  But it wasn't practical.”

I thought about that.  “Why would somebody try to do that?”

“Do you know who Frank Lloyd Wright is?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.  “Daddy has pictures of his houses.”

“It was his idea to use the local clay.  I guess nobody told him how much it rains here,”  she adds.  “Help me roll the balls for these snickerdoodles,” she says.  “Wash your hands first.”

"Okay."

What I've Learned about Love

I enjoy reading books that talk about something I am experiencing.  They help me find words to understand my experience and often point me to insights I have not yet gained.  Reading bell hooks' Communion: the female search for love, 2002 has shaped my thinking about my relationship. 

By hook's definition, E and I have a love relationship.  E is one of the new men she describes who is in many ways freed from patriarchy.  He is able to relate to me in mutual sharing ways.  He is pleased, and surprised, when I don't bring power issues into the bedroom.  He listens to my doubts about my commitment to him without getting reactive.  He rejoices in my friendships with others.  He told me early on that he didn't fit the typical male stereotype mold.  I didn't believe him.  I was wrong.

Because E is different, I have to be different from what I learned in patriarchy.  It takes me a long time to trust that I can ask for what I want.  He used to thank me for telling him things I assumed would be hard for him to hear.  That helped to build my confidence.  I discover that when he is not in patriarchal thinking, I have to find new ways to respond.  I've grown from being afraid of being subordinated to him to enjoying him as a separate person.  bell hooks describes these challenges women face when they enter into relationships with new men.

 

E. and I have been together for almost 9 years.   I found him when I was searching for love.  I had analyzed my previous romantic relationships -- what I thought I was getting and what I actually got.  Then it was time to list what I wanted in a man.  I had 17 qualities.  E.  had all but one.

The first time we got together alone, E "didn't touch my hair".  His hand was so close to my head that it felt like the most gentle of touches.  We talked a lot.  He called me after he got home.  "I didn't mean to cut you off when you started to talk about intimacy.  I got scared.  I want to learn how to be intimate, too."

That's when I knew this man  was special.   He initiated talk about how things were going between us.  We were friends for almost six months before we changed our relationship.  Since the beginning we have each grown and changed.  Our connection is so strong that when one of us changes the other one is changing, too.  We aren't necessarily sorting things out on the same issues, but the growth we share enriches our love.

We live in two different towns.  We spend 3-4 days a week together and the other days apart.  E has jobs in both places.  In the past, I felt there was something wrong with us because we couldn't live in the same house.  Now I feel grateful that we are both aware of what we need and confident in our love for each other.  We have created what works very well for us.  We enjoy the coming together and the separation.  This arrangement does not fit into the arms of patriarchy.  bell hooks has helped me see that my negative judgment of what we've created is a remnant of what I learned as a child.  I want to leave that behind.

I try to understand why academe is so slow to adopt new approaches to education.  I recently helped a friend understand how to write a literature review.  He is in a graduate program and this is a completely knew activity for him.  I was able to give feedback that helped him shape his reading into a paper.  However, I found I needed to stop because my role became one of telling him what he couldn't do because it was not the  traditional approach.  He had integrated large amounts of information.  But he had mixed popular writing with academic, expansive thought papers with academic research approaches.  I thoroughly enjoyed talking with him about the subject (a school garden as a way to help inner city children learn more about their local ecology).  He is insightful and his work is exciting.  In trying to help, I became the enforcer of all the craziness of academic institutions.

March 14 bgblogging describes how students can learn breadth and depth from using the internet.  I particularly like her quote, " students come to see that in addition to the delights of grazing the possible, we can use the connective, collaborative practices of the Web to dig far more deeply into subject matter. . . ."    Instead of forcing students into preconceived molds she sees the opportunities in encouraging students to use the web to learn and participate widely.  At the same time she creates spaces and tasks for her students to use to work together, learning from the common focus on a task or an approach to a task while bringing a lot of individuality to it.  In her classes students cannot fail to participate.  The activities are designed to bring students to the heart of who they are and what they want to do. 

Why does academe favor limiting what students can and should read?  Why not evaluate what students produce, how well they are able to integrate and articulate their ideas.  Barbara Ganley has her students work from their experience and from reading other authors to see how those authors work as writers.  She encourages her students to respond to the writing around them.  No wrong answers.  When I took intro. to literature in college, our exams were frequently multiple choice.  That approach is predicated on there being right and wrong answers. 

I think the reaction against wikipedia is similarly based on a focus on right and wrong answers.  What if, instead of mocking students for using it, faculty had students participate in creating it.  Students could check on the accuracy of a topic of interest to them and join in changing it.  Concepts of a huge wiki created by the public, open source software, and creative commons licenses are difficult for many people to understand or accept. 

What about our culture needs to change for higher education to be more open to learning over regulation of knowledge?