Slideroll slideshow

We had a couple of cold days this week and they made me think of warmer climes, so I put his slideshow together on Slideroll. I uploaded my photos and then put them on a timeline, made some interesting transitions and got a wonderful calypso tune from Sonificfor the background. On the Slideroll website you can make the music and slideshow work in glorious harmony, but on this blog I refuse to have music that autoplays. How annoying would that be? To get the full effect, click the song button and then the slideshow button.

Wayfaring mashup

All the toys that we are playing with in Web II take a bit of time to get used to, but they have been fun and they are free! This is a map of beaches that I love along the New England coast. See my map at Wayfaring, my user name is kcase58. To see full size copies of the photos in my Flickr slideshow (on the sidebar), see user name stargazevt.

Critical Thinking and Metacognition

This is a tabletop that I am beginning to mosaic. I love to put pieces together in a coherent whole. During our f2f classes this past week the issue of blogging came up again and I’ve been pondering the relative ease with which I can do if for my coursework here at Marlboro. Mind you, I have no intention of ever putting myself “out there” for purposes of letting anyone know what I think about life or politics, but for making connections in an educational context, it makes perfect sense to me. At this moment it’s hard not to be grateful for the degree that I got at Vermont College of Union Institute and University, which I didn’t totally understand at the time. All I remember thinking was Wow, what a cool school to let me make up my own plan of study each semester…while deep inside I wondered where the lectures, texts and required courses were. I had to do so much writing, I was sick of hearing myself think. I came away with deep understandings and connections between geology, astro physics and creation/destruction mythology. I studied our frantic culture along with biological and seasonal time and quantum physics. The founding of our country was interwoven with study of the unheard voices who built it and a deeper understanding of class issues. Now I understand that I didn’t have ADD and those professors weren’t just letting me do my own thing. Can I take this opportunity to once again thank Dick Hathaway, Martha Vanderwolk, Howard Shapiro, Anastasia Kamanos-Gamelin and Frank Trocco? At VC this learning process was called critical thinking and here at Marlboro it is called metacognition. I see them now as a bit of the same thing. Metacognition is critical thinking all grown up.

I read an excellent article in Art Education (Jan 07) called Contemporary Approaches to Critical Thinking on the World Wide Web by Melanie Buffington of the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. I thought it fit in perfectly with what I was thinking about this week in Ped II and Web II and it had the extra added bonus of having been found in an Art Ed Journal! This notion of critical thinking is the crux of how we will all create, co-create, re-create and evaluate content on the web. In Buffington’s article she gives a history of the development of critical thinking in education and how that relates to theories and methodology. Phase I is the John Dewey era from 1910-1939 when critical thinking was in fact reflective thinking, research and the scientific method. Phase II critical thinking (1940-1961) had to do with learning to judge the accuracy of information based on the consideration of evidence, as in the work of Edward Glaser, David Russell and B. Othanel Smith who built on Dewey’s work. The theorists from 1962-1979 (Robert Ennis, Karl Buchman, R. Allen, Robert Rott, and Edward D’Angelo) were proponents of critical thinking as evaluation. They saw critical thinking as separate from scientific method, asking students to assess statement's veracity. The Phase 4 group from 1980-1992 (Robert Ennis, John McPeck, Harvey Siegel, Richard Paul) believe that critical thinking needs to include problem solving and evaluation of value statements. Unlike earlier authors, Paul highlighted the metacognitive aspects of critical thinking. In a recent work, Richard Paul and Linda Elder (2004) wrote, “critical and creative thought are intimately related. Each without the other is of limited use. Creativity without criticality is mere novelty. Criticality without creativity is bare negativity” (19).

Looking up the term metacognition, it first seems to appear in the work of J.H. Flavell in an article in American Psychologist called Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry in 1979, right as we entered phase 4. Metacognition is not just thinking about thinking as I have often heard before. I like the definition from the Encarta online: knowledge of your own thoughts. In the metacognitive process the student actually begins to steer themselves through the cognitive process by planning, observing and assessing the learning that is going on for them. The notion is antithetical to what I had learned growing up about education, but I couldn’t help but look at the development of critical thinking and the development of the human being at the same time. In the early years of elementary education, the research and inquiry of Dewey make sense to me. As a student goes through the middle and high school years the judging accuracy and evaluating the truth thinking of Phase 2 & 3 critical thinking is valuable. So although some metacognition obviously happens before a student enters post-secondary education, it seems to me that the other phases lay down a foundation for metacognitive processes to take hold as a human matures.

Social Bookmarking and Connectivism

This past summer I was lucky enough to have attended the Wild Turkey Feltmakers Shibori and Nuno-felting retreat in the Finger Lakes region of New York. The photo I’m using to illustrate connections this week is a Shibori dyed piece of silk that a participant in the workshop made. While it looks like what we in the West call tie-dye, it is as opposite from that as it is similar. Shibori is a Japanese technique which starts with an intricate and even meditative folding and ironing of a large piece of fabric. Once the fabric is folded and ironed into a small geometric shape there are many ways the fabric is prepared again before the dye is applied. It can be sewn, tied, bound to an object, or items can be attached that will prevent the fabric from receiving dye such as chopsticks, clips, etc. The fabric is then dipped into dye or the dye is painted directly onto the fabric and when the fabric is unbound the results are breathtaking. Patterns, patterns, patterns, my how we do love to seek out and find patterns.

It wasn’t hard to find the patterns and connections this week between our Pedagogy II class and Web II. Both instructors led us down the quantum physics road, Will with social bookmarking and Elaine with Connectivism. What I’d like to think about for this entry is the dual nature of reality that we perceive as order and chaos. This notion embodied to me in the glorious work of Jackson Pollock. Drips on canvas of an outrageous alcoholic you say? No, not quite. Computers have looked closely at them and determined that they are fractals, the order in the chaos. The Internet has an order inherent in the network structure with each node connecting to others. But the chaos lies in its dynamic nature. Who really knows where anything is. It is never the same river twice.

But all of the folks who make up the Internet are indeed self-organizing, just like sytems like to do, on sites such as del.icio.us and furl. They are creating folksonomies all by themselves. Del.icio.us is a place where you can organize the sites you want to bookmark as dynamic links (you will see the updated version of the website when you return). I don’t know how I got along without this site before, it keeps me personally organized. At Furl, you can actually save a static page of the website as it is right now. I don’t see weakness in these folksonomies, because I have a general trust of the populace and a general distrust of those who say they are the keepers of knowledge. There is just no way that anyone can keep pace with the exponential growth of knowledge and I see the Internet as a way to democratize knowledge. Will did an experiment in Web II class to prove that the theory of the Wisdom of the Masses does indeed work. He brought a jar of beans and asked us each to try to guesstimate how many beans were in the jar. Answers were tallied and were all over the map. End results: the person who guessed the closest was off by 34 beans, the average of the group was only off by 17! This is the thesis of James Surowiecki in his book "The Wisdom of Crowds", but what he reminds us it that there needs to be several things in place for the theory to work. What he has found is that there needs to be diversity of opinion, individual independence, decentralization, and a method to aggregate results. It seems as though those things exist currently on the Internet. Where did I hear the phrase The Answer is in the room…?

This leads me to George Siemens learning theory for the Digital Age – Connectivism. So in this dynamic network structure of the digital world how do we navigate learning? Through all of the connections: people to people, data to data, people to data, networks to networks in glorious dynamic chaotic harmony. The learning may be outside ourselves, and when we make the connection to that outside learning our own knowledge grows. The connection points in a network are called nodes. One definition I found said each node is a portal or link to other networks or spaces of knowledge as it’s termed in learning theory. Spaces of knowledge that are different from the brick and mortar buildings filled with the keepers of the knowledge? Amazing, exciting, omnipresent, and face it, not going away. Here are the principles of Connectivism as outlined by Siemens:

*Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions
*Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources
*Learning may reside in [technology]
*Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
*Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning
*Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill
*Accurate up-to-date knowledge is the intent of all connectivist learning activities
*Decision-making is a learning process and what is right today may change tomorrow

Ultimately the role of the teacher in higher education will shift dramatically as this new theory takes hold, because content is no longer privileged. The empty pail waiting to be filled with information metaphor is long past. The students looking up at the lecturing professor are not impressed and want more than to regurgitate tired old tidbits that were valued and important in decades past. On the Experience Designer Network Brian Alger’s weblog states: This perspective is opposed to traditional curriculum design in which knowledge, skills and attitudes seem to be frozen communication. Connectivism does not seem to be trapped by the curricular technology. So the teacher’s role needs to be to show students how to become discerning, think critically, and ask the right questions. Siemens states: Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decision made yesterday is also critical.

Reality is dependent on the Observer or the "I." Truly we each individually create our own order out of the chaos around us. In "The Dancing Wu Li Masters", Zukav states: Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle demonstrates that we cannot observe a phenomenon without changing it. The physical properties which we observe in the external world are enmeshed in our own perceptions not only psychologically, but ontologically as well. When we become active participants in this “distributed cognition” in the digital world we constantly change it and are changed by it.

On Snack Food and Learning Theory

I work in a small office where two out of three of us are in grad school. We got to talking and realized that we were having some similar physical symptoms. Not only did we feel that we had roots that attached us to the chairs we read and did work in, but our brains were full and couldn’t hold anymore…which leads me to the reason that I chose this week’s photo. The analogy that I often use to explain learning to students is that when we connect something we’re studying to something else it makes tiny !pop! of learning. Hence the popcorn…massive quantities of popcorn…

And if my brain feels like it’s going to explode it’s no wonder. In the February issue of Wired, Kevin Kelly quotes Hal Varian of UC Berkley as stating that worldwide information is increasing at 66% a year… The paradox of science is that every answer breeds at least two new questions. More answers mean even more questions, expanding not only what we know but also what we don’t know. Every new tool for looking farther or deeper or smaller allows us to spy into our ignorance (124).

The brain is an amazing three pounds of matter. In 1999 the mother of two of my students was in an accident which caused traumatic brain injury. I watched as the long arduous healing process began and she needed to relearn even the smallest facets of life. But she did learn and her brain rewired itself and she wrote an amazing memoir called “Gifts from the Broken Jar.” Just months after reading her book my 22-year old son had a seizure and was diagnosed with an astrocytoma brain tumor. Through his surgery and treatment I was able to hold onto the fact that I knew the brain could construct new wiring. It in fact did, relatively quickly and my son is in remission.

Learning appears to be this constant new construction of our networking on a neurological level. So our brain is not an empty vessel waiting to be filled up as the behaviorists thought and this is a new paradigm for education. One where the learner plays the central role in education and the teacher plays the role of guide on the side. I resonated with the quote in Chapter 2 of “How People Learn:”

Teachers found it useful to replace their previous model of “answer-filled experts” with the model of “accomplished novices.” Accomplished novices are skilled in many areas and proud of their accomplishments, but they realize that what they know is minuscule compared to all that is potentially knowable. This model helps free people to continue to learn even though they may have spent 10 to 20 years as an “expert” in their field.

I think this way of looking at being a teacher brings the learning experience to one of collaboration where peers are learning together. This constructivist theory where learning happens as a result of the construction of new ideas built on one’s already existing knowledge means everyone brings something valuable to the table. Obviously the teacher is still the class authority, but not an authoritarian.

I pondered the question of how this new paradigm shift will take place within education because I still struggle sometimes with the blurred roles of teacher and student. I love learning and so have no problem taking responsibility for it, but last Ped II class I told Elaine I was uncomfortable being part of the process of deciding how my final project would be evaluated. In her thesis “Constructivism in Practice,” Kim Osberg quotes Cunningham, It is a difficult and subtle discrimination to decide when to intervene and when to let students struggle with the construction process…In my experience, some students are unable or unwilling to assume responsibility for their own learning. Those who are unable should be coached. Those who are unwilling need to be persuaded.

Next week I will be trying to understand an emerging theory called Connectivism. It ties learning theory to quantum physics and chaos theory. I found this graphic in Brenda Mergel’s paper called “Instructional Design and Learning Theory” and felt it tied in well.

I began to understand a bit more why this grad school process was really making me feel so different. In “The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius,” Nancy Andreasen tells us that neuroscience makes us aware that experiences throughout life change the brain throughout life. We are literally remaking our brains – who we are and how we think with all our actions, reactions, perceptions, postures, and positions – every minute of the day and every day of the week and every month and year of our entire lives. Your brain is being changed by the process of reading this (146). This discovery of neuroplasticity or the ability of the brain to change its structure is a new field of science, but a fascinating one full of potential for education. In the January 29, 2007 issue of Time Magazine, Stephen Pinker writes about “The Mystery of Consciousness:” As scientists probe the limits of neuroplasticity, they are finding that mind sculpting can occur even without input from the outside world. The brain can change as a result of the thoughts we think! That's real food for thought.