Tag: p2pu

31/365 Three Infographics You Should See (plus one more)

Infographics are fun, right? I mean, who doesn’t like their data with a side of pictures?

The three here (plus one more) have been open tabs in my browser for weeks now. While I question some of their findings and methods, it’s in those questions that I see the opportunity to a deeper conversation about the work we’re doing, whose doing it, and why.

1. The (Australian) Achievement Gap

via Nancy Rubin, developed by Open Colleges

While focusing on the Australian perspective, this graphic strikes me as interesting to deploy into a classroom where (U.S.) students are investigating other cultures and attempting to make sense of charts/graphs.

2. Teachers Embrace Digital Resources to Propel Learning

via Josie, developed by PBS Learning Media

While the use of pie charts is questionable, dropping this graphic at the top of a faculty meeting or using it to start the development of a school or district tech plan could generate some great conversation. Of particular interest: How is what we see here reflected in our own learning space? What do we see that we want to know more about?

3. The Social Media Cheat Sheet

via Alex Shevrin, developed by Flowtown

Alex shared this in our ongoing conversation in our Antioch University New England / P2PU course on social media in education (come join), and I love it. I’ll be using it whenever I get the chance to talk to teachers about affordances and constraints of social tools in the classroom. If I were teaching right now, it’d also be a starter for a class conversation about how we could build things in class that were useful and connected to the outside world. Love it.

4. The Changing Face of the Teaching Force (I promised one more)

via Penn GSE, developed by Richard Ingersoll

One of the conversations I keep coming back to as I work with student teachers is, “What will your impact be in the classroom?” If you’re guessing I’ll be pulling in this graphic for one of our future seminars, then you are correct. Ingersoll’s work is presented in a provocative and consumable way, and I’ve had many conversations about what the shifts he highlights might mean for the shifting picture of the students in those classrooms as well. If I were working in a district HR office, this would be how I started thinking about hiring practices or examining what we already have in place.

2/365 Some Ideas Worth Building a School Around

A few forevers ago, a post on P2PU’s Researchers’ Homestead flashed across my screen, I pulled down its attached document and saved it in a folder literally called “ETC” full of PDFs I save for someday.

I got around to it yesterday, and I have to say this chapter from Collaborative Learning, Reasoning, & Technology started to move some furniture in my head. The chapter, “Fostering Knowledge-Creating Communities” by Katerine Bielaczyc and Allan Collins threw around some ideas with which I’m familiar with such as “communities of practice.”

Newly interesting (and responsible for the aforementioned mental furniture shuffling) were Bielaczyc and Collins’ seven “characteristics of knowledge-creating communities.” Coming from a school built around core values that were embodied in most all choices – curricular and not – made regarding learning, I’ve been on the lookout for other core values that strike me as meaty enough to feed a school’s mission. These seven might fit the bill:

  1. Sharing Ideas – “Knowledge sharing leads to knowledge creation, because invention involves bringing together different ideas into a coherent new idea.”
  2. Multiple Perspectives – “Rather than separating different ideas, it is critical to solicit different ideas within the community, so that all may be considered in devising new solutions.”
  3. Experimentation
  4. Specialization
  5. Cognitive Conflict and Discussions – “Therefore, it is important that people discuss and argue about ideas without rancor or blame. Arguments must be resolved by logic and evidence, rather than by authority. Ideas are sought from many different sources, particularly ideas that challenge prevailing wisdom.”
  6. Reflection
  7. Synthesis – “When a community is faced with a problem, the solution does not usually come from a single source. Rather it is cobbled together from past ideas and ways of doing things, from different people’s suggestions, from the artifacts and technologies in place, and from ideas and ways of doing things that exist in other communities.”

I’m still working my way through the piece, but can see how these seven could drive structural and curricular decisions within a learning organization. I see how they could help prepare students to be participatory citizens.

I get to teach a master’s course on social networking and schools. Wanna come learn with me?

I missed teaching more than most anything else during this last year of grad school.

From the first weeks of the first semester, my body was confused by the sleeping in, and my brain was confused by the writing of a single essay instead of the grading of 120.

This is why, when I was offered the chance to teach a course next year as part of Antioch New England’s new Next Generation Learning Master’s Program, I was keen to seize the opportunity.

I’ll be creating and teaching the program’s course in social networking for teachers and in the classroom. I’m more than a little excited to be a part of this project. After suffering through some unbearable online courses, I look forward to the chance to design something that can be useful and user friendly.

I’m also pleased to be a part of Antioch New England. Their progressive, experimental approach to learning and teaching is simpatico with my own.

The course is one in a 5-part master’s sequence, but it (and any of the others in the sequence) can be taken as a stand-alone.

For my money, each of the other courses, led by Cathy Brophy, Gary Stager, Dan Callahan, and Cathy Higgins are worth every moment. I’m more than a little humbled to be included in the team, and I’m planning to sit in on each of the courses to whatever extent I can.

I’ve started tinkering with ideas in my head, and I’m certain that tinkering will spill out here once some of the formalities are taken care of. One piece I’m certain of is wanting to run a large portion (if not the entirety) of the course through Peer to Peer University’s School of Education. That way, anyone wishing to get credit for the course can sign up through Antioch and anyone interested in augmenting the fund of knowledge for the group can walk through the P2PU door.

For now, if you’re at all interested in learning along with us and/or earning a master’s degree, head over to sign up. I’m excited to be learning alongside everyone who takes the course and/or enrolls in the program.