This Week in ds106: Week 3 Preview

4 Responses to This Week in ds106: Week 3 Preview

1. Cynthia Sarver says:

   January 31, 2012 at 12:02 am

   Sounds like my students and yours are in about the same place. A couple have yet to get square with the blogs — not for lack of trying it seems, but the problems are familiar enough now that I think that we’ll be able to deal with them tomorrow in class (meaning, students have taken on the role of tutoring one another, which is awesome).

   It seems that a bunch of students copied the example code from the tutorial into their CIC server applications, and that has been one source of the slowdown for many (i.e., identifying the problem, fixing it, and then waiting till the fix goes through). The other group seems mainly to have had problems actually locating user names and passwords to logon to WordPress. Then there are also the couple of days that it takes for everything to propagate to servers. The couple who are still having problems seem to be in the latter group. We will see. Once all is clear, I will have completed the nearly complete list of our blogs, which I will share with you.

   Thus far in class, we’ve been talking about why this kind of learning is so unfamiliar and (for many) so uncomfortable and why we don’t see it schools much. As you know, we’re primarily interested in K-12, but are also self-reflecting on our position in higher ed, since we’re all (mostly) products of the public K-12 system. As (future) educators, we’re interested in deconstructing how institutions of education figure into and perpetuate the problem, taking our lead in large part from Will Richardson (whose new “Learning on the Blog” we’re reading for class). You can see our discussion here (under “Forum”), if you’re interested: http://21centuryliteracies2010.ning.com/.

   Our plan for the week (class is tomorrow am) is to make sure that everyone is onboard with the blogs and, much like Alan, it seems, talk a bit about “experimenting with blogs” and a few plugins, talk about what it means to tweet and to blog, and to discuss the importance of commenting and participating in TDC. Then I just want to give them some time to play while I’m there to answer questions. My sense is that for many of them, it’s all a bit overwhelming (not just the technology, but the notion of what all of this means, how it changes things profoundly — a mindset shift that is waaay in my rearview mirror now), so they might not be jumping in feet first the way I’d hope them to. They are not yet as fully integrated into the ds106 conversation/community as I would like them to be, so that will be one goal of tomorrow and this week. In order for this experiment to work for me/us, they need to feel a part of the community.

   Also this week, I want us to spend some time discussing the “bag of gold” lecture (probably on Th). It’s heady stuff and though many have written up blog responses, I’m not sure we have really grasped (what I find to be) the profundity of Gardner’s observations. Again, the analysis of the educational institution (higher ed as well as K-12) is key for us. On that note, can you please show me where to find the archive of the guest speakers’ talks? I’d like for students to be able to see those…

   So that’s where we are and where we’re headed. We’re probably a day or so behind your schedule/lead, which seems to be working out ok. Let me know if you have questions or would like to chat further.

   Reply
2. Cynthia Sarver says:

   January 31, 2012 at 1:30 am

   Never mind….scrolled down the page and found the links I was looking for. 🙂

   Reply
3. Alan Levine says:

   February 9, 2012 at 12:22 pm

   This is exciting what you are doing Cynthia!

   Reply
4. Cynthia Sarver (@cynthiasarver) says:

   February 9, 2012 at 4:13 pm

   Thanks, Alan. We’re all having fun and learning a lot. Thanks to you and Jim for letting us join you on this wild ride!

   Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.