Twitter Chat #2—Flipped Classroom: Success and Failures—Is it Worth the Risk?
Time: 5:00 p.m. December 15, 2014
Hosts: Cheryl Morris and Andrew Thomasson
Hastag #Flipclass

As an Advanced Placement teacher and someone who has had to grapple with difficult texts and break them down for students, I thought this was going to be a fun, enjoyable experience. Quite the contrary. My brain hurts. Perhaps I have been away from the world of intellectuals for too long, or maybe I am just feeling the effects of age. In terms of informing my professional practice, the close reading experience of a difficult text gave me an appreciation for what my students must be feeling, especially my second language learners. It also causes concern with some of the Common Core requirements that students need more of these experiences and strategies to assist them. This particularly holds true with the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) exam and the redesign of many of the AP course exams. It is one thing to have a week to digest difficult material and reflect on it and another experience to have to experience it in a timed situation. Many of my second language AP World students struggled last year when having to read and interpret excerpts from primary source texts as part of their multiple-choice exam. The challenge for me when teaching complex texts is how much scaffolding to provide while trying to teach students to use strategies like close reading effectively. 

Situated Learning (Legitimate Peripheral Participation) by Lave and Wenger (1991)

Quote: "Learning is a process that takes place in a participation framework, not in an individual mind." (p.15) I selected this quote because it broadens the traditional definition of learning to extend learning to involving a collective act. Here rather than learning being an individual activity where the learner is somewhat isolated, learning involves a community of participants. It is in this global framework and through these interactions that meaning gets constructed.

Question: According to Lave and Wenger (1991), how students learn in school should be rethought from the perspective of the Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) viewpoint. Although I agree that there is a need to rethink schooling, the infrastructure needed to achieve this is not yet in place. My question for Lave and Wenger is what rethinking schooling from an LPP perspective might look like in the current school environment? 

Connections: "we emphasize the significance of shifting the analytic focus from the individual learner to learning as participation in the social world, and from the concept of cognitive process to the more-encompassing view of social practice. "(43) This connects with Richardson's argue in his essay "Why School.." given the abundance of information and the way in which the 21st century student processes and learns information. 

"Learners inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and ... mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of community." (p.29). This reminds me of newcomers to the Twitter community. To gain mastery in this area of social media, requires participating in all of the sociocultural practices of the Twitter community. As someone somewhat new to Twitter prior to this course, I only moved toward mastery of social media by immersing myself in it. This required validation from within the community in order to move toward full participation.

Epiphany: The text from Situated Learning by Lave and Wenger (1991) was much more of a challenge to wrap my brain around it than I anticipated. Overall, I learned a lot about the Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LLP) perspective and Lave and Wenger's situated learning model. Many of the ideas are visionary and seem relevant given today's learners and the abundance of technology. However, I still have concerns about implementing some of these ideas into practice. Much of the infrastructure, at least in the school environment is missing.

TWITTER CHAT #1--BLENDED LEARNING BENEFITS
TIME: THURSDAY, NOV.6, 2014 AT 5 PM
HOST: JULIE EVANS
HASTAG #SUchat

REFLECTIONS ON A NEW CULTURE OF LEARNING—CULTIVATING THE IMAGINATION FOR A WORLD OF CONSTANT CHANGE  by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown

Chapter 7: Knowing, Making and Playing

Quote: "In the new information economy, expertise is less about having a stockpile of information or facts at one's disposal and increasingly about knowing how to find and evaluate information on a given topic." (1281). I chose this quote because it emphasizes an important change in our culture. "Knowledge" was at the heart of Greek Philosophy and shaped much of the development of our the modern world. However, it is becoming more the case today that location and understanding what to do with our knowledge is becoming more relevant.

Question: Do we lose something when we remix?

Connection: The element of play engages the learner and sees the learner as an active participant. This was definitely true in terms of my experiences in my 20% project. Much of the learning involved the element of play and definitely required active agency. I think that some subjects lend themselves to learners being more active in the process than others. For example, a science experiment makes it difficult for the learner to be a passive agent. 

Epiphany: That meaning now arises from contextualization rather than interpretation. As a history teacher, I'm always trying to get my students to take the context into consideration to help them make more informed interpretations and thoughtful analyses. 

Chapter 8: Hanging Out, Messing Around, And Geeking Out
Quote: "As people start to play in their environment, they rediscover the different possibilities opened up." (1439). This seems to be more the case with younger children than with high school students. The bridge to make the cognitive leap from one's relationship to others to one's relationship to the environment is not always easy to build. 

Question: Is "Geeking Out" essential for learning for the 21st century student?

Connection: The EDL630 course has helped me develop my own social identity in terms of "hanging out". The longer this course runs, the more comfortable I'm becoming hanging out in spaces mediated by digital technology. In fact, I feel like something wonderful will be lost once it ends.

Epiphany: In today's world, we have so many resources at our fingertips, both social and technological. It seems anything is possible. I think the challenge of this is learning how to harness, access, and make use of all of these resources. I agree with Thomas and Brown that it is less about knowing what and more about knowing where and how to evaluate the knowledge. I often feel this way in my role as the Digital Teacher Leader at my school site.


Chapter 9: The New Culture of Learning for A World of Constant Change

Quote: "Play is more than something we do, it is who we are, and play precedes culture." (1682). I selected this quote because it is the necessary element that connects both information and experimentation, and it expresses  itself in the way students are learning today.


Question: How do we fuse together the abundance of information and experimentation without losing site of outcomes?


Connection: The importance of using answers to find better questions rather than just asking questions. That the answers help us redirect are questions or research to solve problems. This reminded me of the inquiry process for my 20% project. Initially, I started with several questions. However, the more answers I discovered, the more these answers helped me to revise my questions or the more it lead me to ask other questions in order to resolve the problem.


Epiphany: The importance of the element of play in creating an open space for imagination. I'm not sure I completely agree that we need to care more about experimentation, play, and questions than about efficiency, outcomes, and answers. Outcomes are relevant if we are to continue to move forward. Although, we should not be obsessed with outcomes, we do need to consider where outcomes fit into the new culture of learning.

REFLECTIONS ON A NEW CULTURE OF LEARNING—CULTIVATING THE IMAGINATION FOR A WORLD OF CONSTANT CHANGE  by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown

Chapter Four: Learning in the Collective

Quote: "Peer-to-peer learning is amplified by emerging technologies that shape the collective nature of participation with those new media." (587) I selected this quote as it isn't all completely a new concept, but it adds a new element to consider when structuring group work. In fact, I'd argue it turns traditional 'group work' upside down.

Question: How do we get past the "free-rider" problem when we work as a "collective"? This becomes more of an issue, the larger the group. How do we measure collective success? Are we losing site of the individual agency?

Connection: "It is the combination of the active and passive forms of participation that make a blog or website successful" (633). I resonate with this in several ways. First it reminds me a lot of New Social Movement Theory. Thomas and Brown even reference Benedict Anderson at some point in all of this which I reference back in my MA thesis from UCSD on Political Parties and Social Movements. It also connects with my own blogging experience for EDL630. Students need to interact with their environments to continue to learn and grow.

Epiphany: "Blogs generate the space for a collective to emerge" (633). Probably more a connection than an epiphany, but this is the same type of space the people in Egypt were able to use to mobilize. As an educator, I've always struggled with traditional 'group work'. I have ended up assigning both an individual grade and a group grade in an attempt to escape the "free-rider" problem and ensure that everyone is doing their part. However, the "collective" model, turns this upside down. It sounds good, but can we tie it to a learning outcome or an objective?

Chapter Five: The Personal with the Collective

Quote: "we shape and define the boundaries of our agency and identity within the collective" (672). This resonates with me partly as a student fascinated by collective action and social movements, but I feel it is here that new identities get constructed, and action occurs.

Question: How do we evaluate collectives?

Connections: With the rapid change of technologies, it has become easier to work as a "collective." My own experiences with my 20% project have convinced me of the benefit of reaching out to a larger community in order to expand my knowledge and learning. Despite my acceptance of the need to foster the emerging collectives, I hope that identity does not get lost in the process.

Epiphany: The idea that technology has provided a bridge between personal interests and collectives, and has caused people to "think outside of" and challenge boundaries. This relates to technology leadership, as you often have to think outside the box and challenge existing boundaries to move to the next level. 
 
Chapter Six: We Know More than We Can Say

Quote: "We know more than we can tell" (955). According to Douglas and Brown  the tacit dimension of knowledge has become more vital in today's world than explicit knowledge. I selected this quote because I agree with the idea that we learn by doing, through observation, and by experiencing something first hand. 

Question: What is "indwelling" and how is it connected to inquiry?


Connection: The connection between passion, inquiry, and learning. The idea that student's learn best when they are able to follow their true passions. It is here when one tends to work harder to find the answers. I found this true about my 20 percent jam-making project. This project required inquiry, asking questions about what I don't know, and it required tacit knowledge. I had to experience making the jam to learn the process of making it. 

Epiphany: The idea of collective indwelling. How we can use inquiry to turn diversity into an advantage our classroom. This will afford multiple ways to answer a question and we can approach it using multiple learning styles. Also, that we need to consider the learner's sense of indwelling when trying to engage with the learner's passions. 

REFLECTIONS ON A NEW CULTURE OF LEARNING—CULTIVATING THE IMAGINATION FOR A WORLD OF CONSTANT CHANGE  by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown

Chapter One: Arc-of-Life Learning

Quote: "Play, questioning, and—perhaps mot important--imagination lie at the very heart of arc-of-life learning" (64). This quote is at the heart of learning and captures how people make sense of the world. It also allows us to connect the way we learned in the past with the way we learn in the future.


Question: How do we combine the abundance of information and a structured environment to learn effectively in a world that is constantly changing?

Connection: My experiences in the EDL621 course and EDL630 course have caused me to rethink how students learn, how I learn, and what motivates today's learner. In many ways, these courses have transformed the way I think about education and learning, and what Thomas and Brown (2011) state as key elements for the new culture of learning: information, imagination, and play. From Wager's book, The Global Achievement Gap (2014), I learned about the essential survival skills students need to survive in this 21st century "world of abundance." Reflecting on my 20 percent project and on many of the "cool" technology tools I have learned through discovery, I feel I have become part of the new culture of learning. I have shared interests with many of the online communities I have joined, developed my passions (finally turned the wine grapes into jam), and have engaged in a play of imagination through my own participation in a 3D game lab or "gamified" environment. Much of Thomas and Brown's book remind me of the New Social Movement paradigms I learned about while in graduate school at UCSD (1990), only here the identities being constructed are being driven by the pace of technology and a need to change along with it, rather than new identities emerging as part of a counter culture or a need to overthrow existing regimes. 

Epiphany: The connection between resources and personal motivations,  and how everyday people are using these to construct something personally meaningful that at the same time, adds to the existing knowledge. I am inspired and challenged to integrate some of these new modes of learning into my classroom. In terms of my role as a leader in technology, I am committed to a more effective integration of it.

Chapter Two: A Tale of Two Cultures

Quote: "Encountering boundaries spurs the imagination to become more active in figuring out novel solutions within the constraints of the situation or context." (327). As children we are naturally curious and are constantly solving problems. I agree with the idea that boundaries challenge humans to find answers to problems. What is needed often is the time to figure out innovative solutions.

Question: How do we get our school environments to thrive in 21st century where many of the boundaries are not yet defined? If the answer is to form a symbiotic relation with our environment, how do we construct this new identity?

Connection: In order to survive in the 21st century abundance of information, students need to be able to create in this new culture and not just react or adapt to it. As educators, we need to help our students to emerge with the new environment and provide them with the resources and tools needed to continue to grow with it rather than be left behind.

Epiphany: Embracing what we don't know is okay, as long as we come up with better solutions, and continue to ask questions. As an educator, it is important to continue to learn, ask questions, and problem solve. In this way, we too, change with the environment and continue to construct the world around us.

Chapter Three: Embracing Change

Quote: "Embracing change means looking forward to what will come next. It means viewing the future as a set of new possibilities, rather than something that forces us to adjust" (454). I chose this quote because it conveys what is necessary to compete in today's world.


Question: How do I convince others to embrace change and be open to it rather than feeling like they are being forced to adjust, especially in education? What is the right balance of structure and freedom?


Connection: We need to embrace change and start looking at information as a resource or tool, and view learning in a new way (that it is constructed through our engagement and interactions with the world and through). As an educator, I must incorporate elements into my teaching such as questioning, play, and imagination, and I must be willing to change my teaching practices where needed to be part of the new culture.

Epiphany: Innovation and play are key to a happy workplace, happy life, and continued motivation, yet there is struggle to achieve this. Here is where the challenge lies.

Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner

Final Reflection: In my final reflections on Wagner and his Seven Survival Skills, I thought about what I might change and what I should keep. I concluded that all seven are essential to meet the needs of the 21st century student and teacher. However, I agree with many of my peers that something is missing. In this case, empathy. Being able to empathize and understand multiple perspectives and the heart of the human soul is invaluable, especially in a world where the global affects the local. The ability to empathize and put yourself in the perspective of another is an essential skill.

Tony Wagner’s Seven Survival Skills (Mashup)

Survival Skill #1: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Critical thinking involves students being engaged in problem solving and approaching the original problem from various perspectives in order to accomplish their goal. This involves being open-minded, willing to take risks, and learning from failure. According to Wagner, rather than work being defined by an individual’s specialty, it is defined by the problem or task that needs to be solved and often requires students to be able to problem-solve as part of a team.

My students in World History use common core performance tasks that require critical thinking skills to solve real-world global issues and approach analysis of primary and secondary sources like an historian.

Survival Skill #2: Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence
Technology has afforded students to work collectively and collaboratively with individuals across the globe from different perspectives and backgrounds. This involves a globe understanding of history and culture, and requires a degree of empathy. Students today need to learn how to effectively communicate with people of different races, perspectives, histories, and culture. This involves a more global definition of citizenship and what it means to be a citizen in the digital world. By learning about global events and how these affect history, including future histories, students become passionate and find new ways to influence global outcomes and make a different in their world.

Survival Skill #3: Agility and Adaptability
With the abundance of new technologies and the pace of global change, it is important to be able to process information and make sense of it. Students need to be able to quickly assess information, adjust for new information and adapt to new situations accordingly. This skill often involves practice and some risk-taking to get use to meeting various types of work demands or expectations.

Survival Skill #4: Initiative and Entrepreneurship
Leadership today involves taking more initiative and learning how to lead others through influence rather than through orders. This requires seeking out new strategies, new perspectives, and dynamic thinking to reach solutions and in meeting challenges. In teaching history, this often involves case studies, looking at changes over time, global comparisons, but not forgetting the human equation. It is important to be able to think outside of the box and to be innovative.

Survival Skill #5: Effective Oral and Written Communication
The ability to express one’s views clearly is becoming more important today with the growing pace of technologies that limit face-to-face interactions. Often, meanings get misunderstood in emails, texts, and even with video-conferencing. Students now need to learn multiple communication skills that are appropriate for different contexts. Contextualization, both orally and in writing is becoming a valuable communication skill.

Survival Skill #6: Accessing and Analyzing Information
To be an informed citizen and lifelong learner in today’s global world requires the ability to access and evaluate multiple sources quickly and efficiently. The growing use of and abundance of information at our fingertips, requires critical thinking and problem solving, thinking outside of the box, and being able to work with others to process the information or to create new meaning.

Survival Skill #7: Curiosity and Imagination
Creativity and innovation are also critical to problem solving, and to developing new products and meeting challenges in a different way. With the abundances of new widgets, products, and services, it is becoming more difficult to create something sustainable yet unique.

Survival Skill #8: Empathy
Being able to empathize and understand multiple perspectives is even more important with globalization. Natural disasters, human rights issues, and wars are no longer isolated events to be ignored but are part of a shared dialogue and must be understood as such.

This is both an APP SLAM for the iPAD App Educations and a snapshot of how I'm using Educreations to capture my 20 Percent Project on making Wine Jams and Jelly from my Syrah Grapes. Enjoy!