Welcome Students Near & Far Catalina Laserna, DPhil Patricia Craig, PhD to EDUC E-104 Theory and Practice of Web Pedagogies

Agenda Introduction of teaching team The Four Elements BREAK Course Overview Assignments Readings Preview

Agenda: Lab How to post your introduction and learning goals Getting an account on the Collaborative Curriculum Design Tool (CCDT) Distance students

First Element: Community Community –Popular imagination and discourse Place or value based Normative (3:06) –The social sciences How do we distinguish types of community? Using social structure to explain and predict Where popular discourse and social science merge Empirical shift in community means need to rethink

Community Community (cont.) –Intentional communities: learning communities Culture of learning Model is collective understanding Diversity is valued and utilized Learning belongs to a community of practice In education, learning communities is the culmination of community of practice concept

Community Community (cont.) –Elective communities: virtual communities Temporal and spatial gaps Strength of ties Power relationships Expansion of public space into virtual space OR Further breakdown of community

Second Element: Theory of Affordances WHAT IS THIS?

Theory of Affordances We perceive the typewriter as: Write-able with? Sit-able? Throw-able? Paint-able?

According to Gibson, Affordances are… Not in the object Not in the subject “Affordances” conceptualizes the relationship between the two

What’s the Key? It en-ables The verb “afford” existed Gibson made it a noun: –“Affordance”

Affordances in this Course Learn to analyze technological tools terms of affordances Use the analysis to deepen transformative designs

MODES AND MEANS OF COMMUNICATION Primary Orality Learning by doing, talking Literacy Use of different kinds of “literacy” media “Cybercy” We made it up! Use of digital media

Permanency of message O L C Talk vanishes Words on Paper= immutable mobiles Dynamic environments Digital encoding

Transactional Distance O L C Face-to-faceType-faceInter-face

Storage of Information Distributed system O L C Burden on Human Memory Collective memory “frees” human memory (Paradox of Rote Memorization) Simulates RL (Real life) Affords mixing of Symbolic Representations

Grand Social Theories O L C The Advent of Language makes Culture Possible -> Humans as Cultural Creatures Writing affords the beginnings of -> Human History then Printing press -> The Gutenberg Revolution Digital Media and Computers “Artificial Intelligence” -> The Cybercy Revolution… What is going on?

About the O/L/C Matrix O/L/C Ideal Types Needs to be situated in individual & collective experiences O/L/C is a very broad analytic construct O/L/C should “afford” good thinking Add value to each other

How Does O/L/C Relate to This Course? The Web? Collaboration? Private/Public spaces and modes ( , blog) Tools such as “I’m confused” “I have a questions” button O-> C Reflect back on the course’s process as an example of the practice of Web-Pedagogies.

Third Element: Teaching for Understanding Snapshots from the past Rote Memorization: the paradox of literacy in school Memorable Teachers What is understanding? Aim of the Project: practice and theory together

What is understanding? Two quotes from Piaget: “To Understand is to Invent” and “Thinking is internalized action”

How can we make these insights shape educational reform?

Teaching for Understanding with New Technologies In what ways does the Web afford new ways of teaching for understanding? … the Generative Topic for this course

The Teaching for Understanding Framework Throughlines Generative Topic Understanding Goals Understanding Performances Ongoing Assessment

Fourth Element: A Systems View A Systems Perspective –Big picture –Interrelated aspects of the environment –Unintended consequences –The policy view

A systemic view Community school clas s home Public Policy Technology

10 Minute BREAK!

Course Overview Go to the syllabus section of the Course Website xt21979/syllabus/

Assignments Go to the Assignments section of the Course Website 979/Assignments/

Readings Preview for “Varieties of Communities” du/~ext21979/syllabus/ du/~ext21979/syllabus/

Learning Communities in Classrooms A Reconceptualization of Educational Practice By Katerine Bielaczyc and Allan Collins A Reconceptualization of Educational Practice 1.Reading Questions 2.Structural Preview

Analysis of Learning-Community Classrooms Knowledge- Building Fostering a Community of Learners Inquiry Math Classroom Goals of the community Learning activities Teacher roles and power relationships Centrality/peripher ality and identity Resources Discourse Knowledge Products

Lecture Bibliography Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. U of California Press, 1986 Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community. Touchstone, Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon and Schuster, 2001.

Reading Preview: Gemeinschaft Revisited:A Critique and Reconstruction of the Community Concept By Steven Brint

Brint Sociologists took 2 paths in studying community; one (Toennies) was in a sense a dead end. Not analytically viable. Other (Durkheimian) produced structural and cultural variable that tell us something But in the process, community concept broken up; can it be put back together again? New Typology: communities as aggregates of people who share common activities and/or beliefs and who are bound together principally by relations of affect, loyalty, common values and/or personal concern.

Brint Changing types of communities Look at the basis of ties, reason for interaction, types of interaction Different structures produce different outcomes, i.e. –Level of mutual support –Integration rituals –Role of identity –Conformity –Liberal or illiberal values Look particularly at his conclusion: what implications does his view of the possibilities for egalitarianism have for face to face learning communities?