Designing collaborative spaces for schools — from The Journal by By Peter C. Lippman
Thoughtfully designed learning environments can help students work together more effectively.
From DSC:
I would like to see us facilitate such teamwork/collaboration via helping people in the same physical location work together as well as their ability to collaborate with others outside of that physical space (i.e. web-based collaboration).
From DSC:
As a team of us have been charged with putting together a new collaborative workspace/conference room, I’ve been thinking about some ideas for a new type of interface as well as some new types of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to be used in group collaboration/web-based collaboration. I was thinking it would be good to not only display files from various devices but also to be able to share files/URLs/other resources with each other. (Some type of storage device that processes files — and scans them for viruses would be needed in addition to a large display or an interactive multitouch surface/wall.)
People within the same room could contribute files/items to a variety of “areas” — and so could others who joined in via the Internet. Here’s what I had wanted to be able to do and I had pictured in my mind:
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
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It’s very similar to what Tidebreak has created/envisioned in their product lines.
Check out their innovative work/products/concepts!
Transforming learning spaces: 3 big ideas — from Tidebreak
Also see:
Excerpt from Beyond school choice — from Michael Horn
With the rapid growth in online and mobile learning, students everywhere at all levels are increasingly having educational choices—regardless of where they live and even regardless of the policies that regulate schools.
What’s so exciting about this movement beyond school choice is the customization that it allows students to have. Given that each student has different learning needs at different times and different passions and interests, there is likely no school, no matter how great, that can single-handedly cater to all of these needs just by using its own resources contained within the four walls of its classrooms.
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With the choices available, students increasingly don’t need to make the tradeoff between attending a large school with lots of choices but perhaps lots of anonymity or a small school with limited choices but a deeply developed personal support structure.
Excerpt from Cooperating in the open — from Harold Jarche
I think one of the problems today is that many online social networks are trying to be communities of practice. But to be a community of practice, there has to be something to practice. One social network, mine, is enough for me. How I manage the connections is also up to me. In some cases I will follow a blogger, in others I will connect via Google Plus or Twitter, but from my perspective it is one network, with varying types of connections. Jumping into someone else’s bounded social network/community only makes sense if I have an objective. If not, I’ll keep cooperating out in the open.
From DSC:
Perhaps helping folks build their own learning ecosystems — based upon one’s gifts/abilities/passions — should be an objective for teachers, professors, instructional designers, trainers, and consultants alike. No matter whether we’re talking K-12, higher ed, or corporate training, these ever-changing networks/tools/strategies will help keep us marketable and able to contribute in a variety of areas to society.
Addendum on 2/5/13:
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From DSC:
I continue to watch this space as the foundations are being put into place for what I’m calling, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.”
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From DSC:
I understand that Mr. George Lucas is going to express his generosity in donating the $4.05 billion from the sale of Lucasfilm to education.
Here’s a question/idea that I’d like to put forth to Mr. Lucas (or to the United States Department of Education, or to another interested/committed party):
Would you consider using the $4+ billion gift to build an “Online Learning Dream Team?”
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Original image credit (before purchased/edited by DSC)
yobro10 / 123RF Stock Photo
From DSC:
What do you think? What other “players” — technologies, vendors, skillsets, etc. — should be on this team?
Description:
By connecting education with smarter technology, Intel offers a look into the future of K-12 education. Watch as students use technology to collaborate with peers and industry experts to build a bridge model, from the initial design phase through the final structure testing. Intel’s education solutions help teachers provide innovative, personalized and secure learning environments to prepare students for successful futures in the 21st century.
I originally saw this at
Addendum on 7/3/12 from an article I wrote for EvoLLLution.com (for LifeLong Learning):
Establishing better collaboration between the corporate world and higher education [Christian]
In the near future, perhaps we could have second screen-based activities whereby corporate leaders are giving TED-like presentations or expressing the current issues in their worlds via a program on Smart TVs, and the students are communicating and collaborating about these presentations via tablets or smart phones. Perhaps there will be electronic means whereby students could submit their ideas and feedback to the presenting companies (and whereby selected ideas could be rewarded in terms of free products or services that the company produces).
Excerpt from the introduction
The growth of online learning in the K–12 sector is occurring both remotely through virtual schools and on campuses through blended learning. In emerging fields, definitions are important because they create a shared language that enables people to talk about the new phenomena. The following blended-learning taxonomy and definitions expand upon and refine our previous work in helping to create a shared language for the K–12 blended learning sector.
In our report titled, “The rise of K–12 blended learning,” we observed that there were six main blended-learning models emerging in the sector from the perspective of the student. This paper introduces a number of changes to that taxonomy based on feedback from the field and the need to update the research to keep pace with new innovations that are occurring in blended learning. Most importantly, the paper eliminates two of the six blended-learning models—Faceto-Face Driver and Online Lab—because they appear to duplicate other models and make the categorization scheme too rigid to accommodate the diversity of blended-learning models in practice. By moving from six to four overarching models, we have created more breathing room in the definitions. We hope these new models will better describe the majority of programs so that nearly all blended-learning programs will fit comfortably within one of the four. Appendix A explains the differences between the new four-model taxonomy and the old six-model taxonomy in greater detail.
Excerpt:
This site is for teachers who want their classrooms to be places with a Christian ethos whatever the subject or age group you teach. It explores what teaching and learning might look like when rooted in Christian faith, hope, and love. It does this by offering 100+ concrete examples of creative classroom work and an approach which enables you to develop your own examples.
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‘What if Learning’ is a “distinctively Christian” approach developed by an international partnership of teachers from Australia, the UK and the USA. It is based on the premise that a Christian understanding of life makes a difference to what happens in classrooms. Its aim is to equip teachers to develop their distinctively Christian teaching and learning strategies for their own classrooms.
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Addendum on 4-17-12:
The 2011 Global Education Conference will be held November 14 – 18, online and free. Sessions will take place in multiple time zones and multiple languages over the five days. The 2010 Global Education Conference had 15,028 unique logins and presentations from 62 countries.
To attend and be kept informed of the latest conference news and updates, please join this network (you can still attend sessions if your membership is pending). The sessions schedule is now live and available in multiple time zones HERE.
When the dam breaks… — from learning with ‘e’s by Steve Wheeler
Excerpt:
Publication of research is one of the most important facets of academic life. I can’t stress enough how important it is for good research to be as widely and swiftly disseminated as possible. Without it, our practice is less likely to be informed, and more prone to repeated errors. As a researcher myself, I take this challenge very seriously. Along with other educational researchers, I attempt to identify key issues for investigation and then spend considerable time and energy examining as much of the terrain that surrounds my research question as I can. Once I have analysed the data, I am usually able to arrive at some conclusions and write some form of report, which is likely to include a set of recommendations that I hope will benefit my community of practice. Such findings should be published widely to inform the entire community. This is the way it should be. And yet often, sadly, it just doesn’t happen.
From DSC:
Steve, I was unsuccessful in leaving a comment on your posting here…but I celebrate your walking the talk on this and for pushing the envelop on the proliferation of open access journals. And thanks for making some recommendations in your reports — for taking some stances. I was greatly disappointed in my ID Master’s Program to find how few scholarly articles took any sort of stand and asserted much of anything to move their communities of practice forward.
Building Learning Communities 2011 Keynote: Dr. Eric Mazur — from November Learning
Excerpt:
Today, we are officially relaunching our opening keynote from BLC11 with Dr. Eric Mazur. Dr. Mazur is the Area Dean of Applied Physics and Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA.
In his keynote, Dr. Mazur shares his vast research on teaching and learning. Students in Dr. Mazur’s class are moving far away from the traditional stand and deliver lectures given in many k-12 and university classrooms around the world, and they are gaining a much deeper understanding of the material being taught in the process.
As you watch this video, we invite you to take some time and respond to one or more of the following questions…
From DSC:
What I understood the key points to be:
Eric ended with a summary of the 2 key messages:
From DSC:
After listening to this lecture, the graphic below captures a bit of what he’s getting at and reflects some of my thinking on this subject as well. That is, we need diagnostic tools — along the lines of those a mechanic might use on our cars to ascertain where the problems/issues are:
