day 2, the website
I'm now thinking (for the past 48 hours) about my project as being split between presentation and practice, or something like that. Re: presentation, I'm not yet sure how to incorporate more presentation-like things into the book. I'm thinking about that one. Re: practice, I learned over the weekend (and have gotten similar feedback before) that educators want examples of what I mean by sameness and disruption. I've been reluctant to do this because I'm pretty opposed to designing a prescriptive here-is-a-series-of-lesson-plans kind of project. I also realize that a single book (not reproduced) does not a large impact make. Or, it's less likely that it'll make much of an impact. (See the Red Book at the Rubin for disagreement here.) So I spent today thinking about the website aspect of the project - see images for an idea of where I'm going. It's based a lot on The Third Teacher website, which is the online home of a book about how space/environment is the third teacher (after adults and peers). The book identifies 79 or so pithy strategies for how this works. (ie: #46 - let students lead.) The website identifies each of these and provides a space for people to comment on them, identifies case studies where this has worked, hosts a blog that comments on this intersection of education/design/environment, and identifies resources if you want to learn more. I don't think the commenting feature works. The book hasn't really been released yet, but there aren't many comments. Also, I don't like the 79 strategies. It seems arbitrary. I do like the case studies, the blog and the resources. So, briefly, here's the content I would want on my own: A blog: I don't keep one of these myself, so it's hard for me to go here. But if I want to contribute to the conversation about ed/tech/design, perhaps I should actually contribute to it rather than wait for other people to respond to my work. I would solicit writing here from people who are leading this conversation in various areas (like Michael Horn, who co-wrote Disrupting Class and who I had a conversation with today on the topic of creativity, efficiency and technology in education). The idea is that this blog would generate a conversation about ed/tech/design, not just react to it. Case studies: Educators want examples, so this would be documentation of technologies put to disruptive practice. My prototype for Alice: A social network for atoms and Adams was grounded in an unsuccessful project I did with my own seventh graders four years ago when I asked them to use Ning to roleplay the relationships between people during the Revolutionary War. I invented Alice three years later, and as a way of testing it (without having to code it), I worked with a teacher to implement something similar using the new-and-improved Ning in her classroom. This experiment was documented last night on PBS Frontline's Digital Nation (really excited about this). So, that's a case study. Lesson ideas: I'm the least satisfied with this section. Lesson plans could be submitted by "users", I guess, which would encourage participation/etc. That's good. I still don't like the here's a lesson plan - now, go! feeling that I tend to get from lesson plan websites; I think that rarely works, because teaching styles/circumstances/personalities are so different. Also, I don't know how to build this, but I could find someone to help. Documentation: This would be a collection of resources that examine this intersection of design/ed/tech, for educators to use if they want to go further. I would also include a video or some other documentation of my ppt book. - christina
