SET+CORE+I+&+II,+January+10,+2009

I. Introduction, discussion of Percy and Wesch
Today's seminar students: Jeremy Rhodes Department of Sociology Teaching Soc 1305

Ashley Palmer-Boyes Department of Sociology Teaching Soc 4325

Debbie McMahon Department of Sociology SOC 1305, Marriage & Family

Gardner Campbell Honors College FYS: From Memex to YouTube: Intro. to New Media Studies [|www.gardnercampbell.net], gardner_campbell AT Baylor.edu

Pre-seminar assignments:

Percy -

rich and full; importance of putting the student IN the experience experienctial emphasis; not a distant learning the whole essay is about perspective

a bit repetitive at times; many examples of the way experience shapes us similar to Heienberg principle - the way we see something affects that something we come in to leanring experiences with preconcieved notions of how we will experience what do students acquire as a result of education: knowledge, and understanding of how to learn;

what you know fights your ability to learn

more life experience can be a hindrance to my learning

teaching students the sociological perspectives on class and race can be quite difficult

what happens if you believe EVERYTHING that you're told? you become a passive learner, regurgitation why not give an A to the student who simply regurgitates?

teaching involves memorization but that's not enough involves question what people tell you, but that's not enough

teaching is messing with student's minds enough until they're strong enough to mess with yours

the sovereign knower - takes ownership of the content; being the sovereign knower involves humility before the thing or concept

active learning is a key to developing this ownership;

we're in a package too; the systen is set up so that a class is simply one of many requirements; we are subject to this bureuacracy as well; we are all subject to the system

learning outcome #1: create garden of delight - put I cant build it myself, students must build it; garden made out of a particular subject matter

if you watn the most radical statement of getting out of the system, read Ivan Illich - Deschooling Society - cumpulsory education makes the student into a consumer; he says this is true of all compulsory social institutions; these institutions always communicate the wrong idea; if you set the system up, you turn them into consumers - next book - Tools for Conviviality

unless the studdent and eduation come out of the package, you do not have authenticity

learnign outcome #2: create sovereign knower - to introduce the class as a collaborative environment, you have the authority to interrupt and participate; relating to the students may put them at ease and tell them that I'm still and always a student

if you have practice as a sovereign knower, you have practice in the garden of delights, and you have practice stumbling

to help the student come to himself not as a consumer of experience, but as a sovereign individual

we provde a framework or scaffolding to support inquiry

how do you set up elements in a course that support inquiry? what do they need as a scaffolding for their inquiry?

Wesch

Wesch= asst. prof of anthropology, recently named research prof of the year by Carnegie, studying digital ethnography

how do gadgets and ideas go together? They can be cut from the same cloth-- gadgets can facilitate ideas; ideas lead to gadgets

Interrelationships: technology can actually help us know each other better rather than alienate/isolate us from one another. The video is fast-paced because technology is fast-paced. This video is a learning object. It has an integrated affordance in that it portrays the thing its talking about. e.g. there would be nothing worse than standing up and giving a boring lecture about rock n' roll. It's like a visual onomonopeia. - Linking the presentation of the thing to what the thing is - The garden of delights

Bruff, Derek. Book coming out next year about classroom response systems - talks about agile teaching = when teacher in the moment can use technology to address what the student/subject - e.g. student with a laptop in class who googles something related to the lecture --> student shows professor --> professor brings youtube clip up on screen in front of class - can this work in your class? you have to be very at ease in the classroom to be able to integrate certain technologies (and be fault tolerant because it's easy to encounter glitches) - you also don't have to go full throtle-- i.e., use CPS (classroom clickers) for just a few weeks; try things out; things are a process; adapting slowly is ok

Debbie's suggestion-- can give students learning tests at the beginning of the course - ePortfolios, PLEs (personal learning enivronments) = places where student collects her/his work over time; allows for archiving and reflection of student; can also allow profs to see what/how students are doing; repository for the student's work, so s/he can see work over time: - http://www.eportfolio.org/ - Wesch: use the class as a culture (blogging can be a way to do this, a personal learning environment) - Personal learning environment: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_learning_environments - http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Personal_learning_environment - ideally, using a PLE would restore, through integration, time you might have lost doing so many things in different places. Think about facebook. What can you do on facebook? It turns out everything: (e.g. for group projects) discussion forums through the groups you create, extensive communication portal. - Wesch says that such things require us to rethink security, privacy, love - "kids" using certain technologies like facebook learn some lessons publicly that would be better to learn in private

Connections/Disjunctions What do we do to make the connections? Spur the imagination. Tell a story from the perspective of the thing itself. Experiential learning. Create meaningful connections. 80% of learning is done outside the classroom. Make a connection with the other 80% from within the learning environment.

**Two further prompts for discussion:**
1. John Bransford, et al., //How People Learn (//http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=6160):

**//Transfer of Learning//**
A major goal of schooling is to prepare students for flexible adaptation to new problems and settings. Students' abilities to transfer what they have learned to new situations provides an important index of adaptive, flexible learning; seeing how well they do this can help educators evaluate and improve their instruction. Many approaches to instruction look equivalent when the only measure of learning is memory for facts that were specifically presented. Instructional differences become more apparent when evaluated from the perspective of how well the learning transfers to new problems and settings. Transfer can be explored at a variety of levels, including transfer from one set of concepts to another, one school subject to another, one year of school to another, and across school and everyday, nonschool activities.

People's abilities to transfer what they have learned depends upon a number of factors....

SEMINAR NOTES:

2. Chris Dede, "[|Our assumptions about learning are fundamentally flawed]." Christopher Dede Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies, Technology, Innovation, and Education 323 Longfellow Hall Cambridge, MA 02138

SEMINAR NOTES:

II. Goals of a Course of Study
1. The Matter of the course should shape the student 2. Shape the matter of the course. A Dialectic. Shape the material in a way to shape or form the student 3. Master and apply disciplinary tools. 4. Content mastery. 5. Enable student to shift their perspective to see things from another viewpoint. Be able to bring multiple perspective to bear.

III. Elements of a Course of Study
What's necessary for a course to be a course? How can we design these elements to encourage the sorts of learning Percy, Wesch, Bransford et al., and Dede advocate? What's necessary - - A class; - **A syllabus - course objectives, assignments, schedule**; What you want the students to learn; to be able to do or say, describe, the subject. What is describe? Delineate between acquiring and using information, such as describe the subject as well as use the information to apply to something else. First, acquire info, then apply it. Does acquistion and application occur simulateously? Master and apply concepts. How are these things entwined? How do you make these two things a garden of delights. How do you transmit this information on a syllabus? Learning is relational, not just a to do list, itinerary for a journey. How to disseminate that idea on the syllabus or to the student? Insert some of this idea into the syllabus, making it,too a part of the garden of delight. In syllabus: **learning objectives, contact info, office hourse, email, learning accomodations, rules**. Grade for attendance? Two trends in syllabus making- put all policies on syllabus, put no policies on syllabus. If all policies are on there, what does the syllabus become? Document as a body of law. May be necessary for new teachers to outline policies and expectation to establish and define authority. Mode of Assessment.** is there to help you understand what they're understanding**.** Tests-knowledge of subject Essays-Integrative experiences, synthesis of learning. "Our roles is not necessarily objective, I'm there to give my opinion on their understanding of the subject." What is the value of a teacher's judgement to the student? "What ever they are willing to allow it to be." Disgruntled students who are typically A students must be pursuaded that a poorer grade also has value-valuable as a learning experience to be used to learn how to improve. What ground do you stand on to give the grade-experience with the subject matter. An Intellectual context that, as the expert opinion, is legitimate power. We've done this a lot! Had them published and reviewed. Assessment is a judgment, your judgment. Commenting on work; comment on strengths as well as weaknesses.
 * Schedule/assignments;

Managing relationships with students- When you design elements of a course, how do you communication emotion and relation without undermining authority? "In the implementation of the elements of the class." "How about declaring the relationship as mutual, two way." Look at how elements of course design can communcate. Experiement with course design that is different, innovative.

IV. Lunch Break:
1. From the Earth to the Moon the teacher expresses his own curiosity to his students. not only dos he express his own curiosity, he tells the students that they have the power, ability, and responsibility to satisfy his own curiosity.

2. A Portal to Media Literacy

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V. Assignments and Grading
Learning Episodes: Bruner

Assignments for deep learning

Feedback vs. grading

Fairness vs. objectivity

Grade inflation

VI. Conclusions, areas for further study
Martin Buber: "Buber expected much of teachers, He stressed the teacher's personal choice, integrity, authenticity, presence and willingness to respond to all students, regardless of the affection or revulsion they might evoke in the teacher herself, as fundamental to establishment of the trust in the world that the student first experiences as trust in the teacher who brings the world to her." Christine Thompson, "Martin Buber," in //Fifty Major Thinkers on Education: From Confucius to Dewey//, ed. Joy A. Palmer (New York, NY: Routledge, 2001, rpt. 2003), 241.

VII. Resources
Academic Commons January 2009//: [|New Media Technologies and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning]//.

Rheingold, Howard. "[|Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies]."

Sherri Turkle (collections of essays: what object made you fall in love with science) //Falling for Science//

Sociological Images: [|//http://contexts.org/socimages///]