Posts tagged: original

This tag refers to “Drawing Things Together” images that I created as opposed to those that are submitted by guests, or those that are links to external sites.

Writing, Identity, and Web 2.0, 2010


For this representation to make any sense, you will definitely want to click on the image and see it enlarged.

This week we read about digital storytelling (Hull and Katz, 2006), fanfiction (Black, 2006), and some of the tensions with applying Web 2.0 practices in education (Dohn, 2009). While there are a number of incredibly important issues being raised by each of these authors, there were three big ideas that struck me that I wanted to include in this response: 1) the role of these various tools in helping individuals to express and shape their identity; 2) the relative absence of discussion of specific tools; and 3) the different relationships with other individuals that were suggested by each of these. In looking at these, I have intentionally simplified the 3 models in ways that some viewers may take issue with (if so, I hope you will comment!). I have also made some potentially contentious choices about when to give individuals complex identities or not. Those choices reflect what I perceived as the relative importance of discussing those identities in the various papers, not a belief on anyone’s part that individuals in certain contexts lose or flatten their identities.

More than ever, given this week’s theme, I hope you will all post comments, suggestions, and critiques below.

  • Black, R. W. (2006). Language, Culture, and Identity in Online Fanfiction. E-Learning, 3(2), 170-170.
  • Dohn, N. B. (2009). Web 2.0: Inherent tensions and evident challenges for education. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 4(3), 343–363.
  • Hull, G. A., & Katz, M.-L. (2006). Creating an Agentive Self: Case Studies of Digital Storytelling. Research in the Teaching of English, 41(1), 43-81.

Virtual Worlds, 2010


This week we talked about Virtual Worlds. The content of this image is related primarily to a paper about the spread of the WhyPox outbreak in Whyville (you can see a host of Whyville-related research at http://kafai-whyville.blogspot.com). However, I think that all of the papers that we read this and in the previous unit on games discuss both the power of virtual experiences to situate learning, and also raise a question about how and when that learning moves out of the virtual world.

Computational Literacy, 2010


I’m struggling this week with how to make the full range and scope of a literacy visible to students in the context of computational literacy as inspired by diSessa’s (2000) book, Changing Minds. It seems that most people either “get it” and therefore don’t need a description, or would need quite a bit of exposure to truly grasp the implications. It feels similar to trying to explain to a 5 year-old why literacy is so much more powerful than their understanding the storybook in front of them, long before they have even begun to appreciate all of the powerful ways that the ability to read and write can transform their daily life. This drawing, therefore, attempts to sidestep the issue by focusing on some of the underlying assumptions of what it might mean to reach a point where computational literacy is accessible to all, as Wing (2008) and diSessa (2000) would encourage us to strive for.

CIP, 2010


This post is in response to the chapter on Cognitive Information Processing (CIP) theories of learning. There were many directions this could have gone, but a lot of the forum discussions this year seem to be about memory with a focus on encoding and recall. That inspired the library theme. The references to radiation and General are a nod to the famous Glick and Holyoak transfer study. For some reason, they came to mind when I was trying to think about a topic to search for in memory. If you are wondering why… ask the librarian!

Participatory Simulations, 2010


This dtg is a response to:
Colella, V. (2000). Participatory simulations: Building collaborative understanding through immersive dynamic modeling. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9(4), 471-500.

Simulation and Modeling Software, 2010


This was inspired by several of this week’s readings that all focused on how various kinds of computational software can make complex science concepts more accessible to students of all ages. Notably:

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Intelligence in Technology, 2010


The dtg this week was designed for two purposes. First, I was responding to Koedinger & Corbett (2006) and Schwartz, Biswas, Leelawong & Davis (2007). These two book chapters discuss technologies that were modeled in very different but interesting ways on the success of human tutors and interactions, as well as a rich understanding of the content domain. Second, we have been drawing and refining models of how technology can support educational ecosystems in class. This is my attempt to infer a general model from the two readings so that we can discuss the limitations of my inference and the underlying models in class. My goal is that this will serve as the center for an interesting conversation about both the readings and the modeling process in general.

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The Next Big Thing, 2010


Framing Technology, 2010


This is in response to Nardi and O’day (1999) and Burbules and Callister (1999), which we read to help us problematize how we were framing the big issues before diving into specific technologies.

Labels and Learning, 2010


This week’s drawing is intended to capture some of the diversity in how theories of learning are identified and framed. This is in response to the first chapter of Driscoll (2005) which we read for this week’s p540 assignment. The labels you see as relevant, and features that you see as either important or puzzling in the drawing are intended to highlight your own personal view of learning and learning theories. Though, perhaps that design choice reflects my own?

Make sure you click on the image to see it full size!