First and foremost, I want to send out an early "Welcome" to 7 UVA students who are spending a semester exploring the relationship between teaching/learning and educational spaces/environments (course: "New Designs for Learning")...and are willing to share some of their passions/expertise with "think:lab" along the way. Brave souls!
Their course instructor, a passionate arts education expert and advocate named Rebecca Borden, and I came up with the crazy (in a good way) idea of opening up the "think:lab" door. Our goal: invite her 7 students to explore class ideas by adding posts of their own here in the spirit of collaboration, exploration, debate, and seeing if we can push a little harder on where the 'future of learning' is headed. While we haven't had the opportunity to meet F2F -- this is being done virtually -- I figure this is a bit like chasing the rabbit down the hole. Sometimes you gotta just see where it leads you with wide-eyed optimism.
So, in the next few weeks you'll begin to see posts that I add that come from Rebecca's students. Each is a graduate student who is passionate about being an educator and school leader. Each has very different professional/life experiences. Each is coming at this 'assignment' in their own way. And each of them will challenge the way I think and hopefully inspire me to explore new ideas along the way.
I'll do my best to introduce them without tampering (too much -- he smiles) with their entries. Additionally, I've agreed to respond to each of their posts/ideas, and occasionally to add some context if I can. Beyond that, I have no idea where it'll take us. But I'm looking forward to it.
If you see something in their ideas that inspires you to leave a comment, that would be wonderful! Hopefully one day soon, you'll see an edu-blog authored by one of these students. Fingers crossed!
"Learning happens in many directions. It is hard to keep track of all of them." Rebecca Borden 11/07/06
In helping a student prepare for this online learning environment and to prepare myself to facilitate this learning experience, I cast the above statement. I like it. I *really* like it.
As the "instructor" in this nuevo-virtual dynamic, I really don’t know where this is going to take me or where it is going to take my students. What am I going to learn about myself as a teacher? As an educational researcher, it challenges me to think about how we document the "downstream" effects of an intervention, see the manifestations of distant transfer in action. An elusive link. As an arts education advocate, I laugh at the notion of assessing student performance through the variables content standards and contact hours. True, deep and meaningful learning experiences are complex and messy. Most importantly, they are unpredictable.
Spontaneity is an elusive treasure in today's classrooms - creating the contexts and conditions for that ephemeral fairy of the "teachable moment" to appear. There! Where?
For me, voyaging into the known dimensions of this virtual learning environment that emerges and unfolds before us over the next few weeks is really quite wonderous. It is not going to be easy and it is certainly not going to be predictable.
I think my students are really anxious, many confused. They want to know what is expected of them or, more specifically, they are psyching out the teacher for what she wants. I want to see possibilities. I want to see risk. I want to see people moving out of their comfort zone and stepping into the zone of ambiguity and watching how they make some sense of order out of the haze. I am eager to see the unintended paths that grow from our journey.
Learning happens in many directions. Where is it taking you?
Posted by: rbb6k | November 09, 2006 at 09:21 PM