Educating Youth for Online Civic and PoliticalDialogue: A Conceptual Framework for the Digital Age
Our thanks to partner author Erica Hodgin for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! Erica and guest reader Paul Oh joined Marginal Syllabus co-founders Joe Dillon and Remi Kalir for a CLTV webinar discussion about this text - it will air "live" on Tuesday, April 3rd at 4p PT.
If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:
Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and April's conversation! This is the seventh text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open technology for web annotation.
a site of intellectual and moral agency
educational labor - building a site of intellectual and moral agency
Learning Management Systems (LMS) are walled gardens
closed architecture
April Baker-Bell, Raven Jones Stanbrough, and Sakeena Everett
Our thanks to partner authors Drs. April Baker-Bell, Raven Jones Stanbrough, and Sakeena Everett for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus. A conversation with our partner authors will air "live" on Tuesday, March 6th at 4 pm PT/7p ET - watch it here, it's a really amazing conversation.
If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:
Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and the March conversation! This is the sixth text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal - or contrary - to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.
The web runs on open standards
Building upon open standards
Thinq Studio—a digital pedagogy workshop, blog, and resource
ThinqStudio has been recognized by the Chancellor's Office as a strategic priority to "advance scholarly excellence and innovation in teaching, research and creative work."
chip away at the barriers that divide universities and communities and turn scholarly monologues into democratic dialogues.
Open web annotation as social practice that encourages boundary crossing
DESIGN PRINCIPLES:
design principles to architect a particular form of learning
they can begin to see themselves think in the classroom and begin to build the muscle that critical thinking calls for.
building critical thinking
build webs of knowledge
building as weaving
We strove to build a space where the presence of everyone — teacher, technologist, and student — would be known, felt, and respected
building a space for shared presence
a site of intellectual and moral agency
educational labor - building a site of intellectual and moral agency
knowledgeable ignorance, perceptive ignorance, insightful ignorance
cultivating high-quality ignorance
Education start-ups like Seesaw give her their premium classroom technology as well as swag like T-shirts or freebies for the teachers who attend her workshops. She agrees to use their products in her classroom and give the companies feedback. And she recommends their wares to thousands of teachers who follow her on social media.
Educator agency co-opted by neoliberal reform; pedagogy traded for the currencies of social and economic prestige.
“There is a history of underfunding.”
A history of building inequality
Learning Management Systems (LMS) are walled gardens
closed architecture
how can we capitalize on digital architecture to help students grow their connective fluency, their capacity for thinking in, building, and seeing connections?
Digital architecture as scaffold for thinking and connecting
aborations, including the 1979 album Off the Wall, from which
another annotation test
sectionPhillinganes
annotation of an annotation
Digital technologies of connectivity affect how we experience space and time; they alter the architecture of the world—connecting people who are not physically near, preserving words and pictures that would otherwise have been ephemeral and lost to time. Digital technologies are the most recent historical versions of communica-tion and information technologies that create these important changes in the architecture of the world.
Architecting connectivity, architecting the world
But can you engineer innovation?
That's the question...
Joseph KahneUniversity of California, RiversideBenjamin BowyerSanta Clara University
Our thanks to partner authors Joe Kahne and Ben Bowyer for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! Joe also joined a number of educators for a Connected Learning TV webinar that will air on February 6th at 4p PT. You can watch it here.
If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:
Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and February’s conversation! This is the fifth text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.
If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:
Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and January’s conversation! This is the fourth text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.
I try to make my literacy work a sustained argument against inequality and injustice.
Thanks to dogtrax (Kevin Hodgson) for both his blog post inviting educators-as-annotators to create "a multimedia collage of thoughts and connections," as well as his annotations in these margins that blend hand-written with digital marginalia (here's one example), I'll share another from my reading:
I'm inspired by Linda's emphasis on teaching as a sustained argument against inequality. In doing such work (for it is work, and more on that later), what - and who - offers sustenance so as to sustain such argumentation? How is such work sustained, particularly over time? And what is the role of networks in sustaining arguments against inequality? I also appreciate Linda's use of the word "work," for teaching is a labor - in this case, literacy education is a means of laboring for equality and justice.
If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:
Linda Christensen
Our thanks to partner author Linda Christensen for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! Linda will be featured alongside Andrea Zellner (Literacy Consultant for Oakland Schools and Teacher Consultant, Red Cedar Writing Project), Kevin Hodgson (6th grade teacher in Southampton, Massachusetts and Outreach Co-director at Western Massachusetts Writing Project), and Marginal Syllabus organizers Joe Dillon and Remi Kalir in a Connected Learning TV webinar scheduled to air on Tuesday, December 5th. This annotation will be updated to include that webinar video.
Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and December's conversation! This is the third text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.
understanding
test
Chapter 6
This chapter by Nicole and Antero is associated with an issue of the journal Review of Research in Education that explores the theme "Disrupting Inequality Through Education Research." If Marginal Syllabus participants are interested in other articles from this issue and do not have access via an academic institution, please contact me privately (i.e. via Twitter DM, I'm @remikalir) and we'll make arrangements.
Nicole MirraThe University of Texas at El PasoaNtero GarciaColorado State University
Our thanks to partner authors Nicole Mirra and Antero Garcia for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! We anticipate that Nicole and Antero will join our annotation conversation throughout November. In addition, please check out these additional resources:
If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:
Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and November's conversation! This is the second text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.
Digital Media and Learning conference
We're really excited to launch the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus at the same time as the 2017 Digital Media and Learning Conference, held at UC Irvine. If you're attending DML and want to learn more about the Marginal Syllabus, many people from our organizing team will also be attending and can talk with you about using Hypothesis and joining these public annotation conversations:
The Marginal Syllabus will also be featured during the session "Layered Learning: Web Annotation in Collaborative and Connected Contexts," on Friday, October 6th, 2p in Emerald Bay DE.
writing an account of the political lives of American Muslim youths
Again, here's Marginal Syllabus partner author Sangita Shresthova's text "Between Storytelling and Surveillance: The Precarious Public of American Muslim Youth,” which was featured in the 2016-17 Marginal Syllabus.
This blog post
Our thanks to partner author Henry Jenkins for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! Henry previously contributed to the 2016-17 Syllabus last April; we read and annotated a chapter from By Any Media Necessary, by Sangita Shresthova, titled "Between Storytelling and Surveillance: The Precarious Public of American Muslim Youth." Sangita, Henry, and a number of other Marginal Syllabus collaborators - Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, Liana Gamber-Thompson, and Joe Dillon - joined a webinar about the text and our annotation conversation: https://youtu.be/E9NHC9YqOTg
If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:
Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! This is the first text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.
hat we have done everything in our power to leave our garden patch a little greener than we found it.
Here's another thing that really frustrates me about this letter, as much as I might agree with its broad brushstroke approach to advocating certain values - one of the most specific examples is an analogy (our garden patch)! I recognize that brevity was an authorial choice throughout, and that many specific examples were not included... so it's odd, to me, that an analogy was included rather than an example from an organization, or from the literature, or from history, or...
We will open and nourish honest public conversation about the power of technology
How? Not only does this letter lack specific recommendations for much of anything, including such public conversation, the limitations of this letter as noted by others - written online, written in English - already constrain notions of equitable participation. That being said, it is both awesome and a bit meta that this group of reader-annotators has taken it upon themselves to "build" (dare I say) one version of that public conversation using the open annotation platform Hypothesis - well done!
Thanks to Maha Bali for organizing this public annotation of an important text. As Maha mentioned briefly at the end of her blog post, the theme of this text and digciz conversation connects nicely with the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus theme of Writing Our Civic Futures. For those who don't know, the Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversations about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. Writing Our Civic Futures invites educators - and those who care about education, like students - to a year of social reading, collaborative web annotation, and public conversation that explores our civic imaginations and literacy landscapes. As civic engagement changes and evolves, Writing Our Civic Futures will consider implications for connected learning and teaching. Click here to learn more about Writing Our Civic Futures and the Marginal Syllabus. As you read and annotate this text, you're invited to tag your annotations with "marginalsyllabus" (as I've done, below). And we'll be sure to add The Copenhagen Letter to a list of complementary syllabus texts featured on the Marginal Syllabus website.
Bahrain
test via box
species
test via box
he texted to tell me
A small but important detail - despite their conflict and mediation, Abraham could still text Bronwyn. Whenever a teacher, school, or district suggests limiting the means of accessibility and conversation among educators and students (including providing phone numbers), this story is a great example of why that matters.
school gravity
This phrase was used earlier and I'd like to know more... which means I should probably read Bronwyn's entire book!
He was the student who, without trying to, called me out consistently on my own detrimental tendencies by churning them up and then handing me a figurative mirror to look at myself.
What a powerful reflection on a student-teacher relationship that eschews placing blame and rather seeks to find a sense of nuanced understanding in a rather complex human relationship. Thank you for sharing!
Writing was a way of communicating in our class that offered him acceptance and an invitation to join the community.
I appreciate this framing of writing as a collection of practices that mediates participation in various contexts, from the personal to the more academic and communal.
The only agency that his narrative offered him was the ability to rid the world of his existence
What a sobering analysis.
he wrote
The following is incredibly powerful! On a tangential note, I'm curious about how Bronwyn worked with Abraham (and other students) to get access to and use their writing in her book. No doubt Bronwyn likely details this elsewhere in her book, though some background for the purposes of our conversation would be grand.
academic dexterity
How many educators take the time to learn about the academic dexterity of their students?
in the two years that this chapter captures
I was recently at a research conference and presented during a session on methodological complexities in studies of learning. Long story short, one of the presenters critiqued the often short timescales of many studies (often less than a few months, if that), and advocated years-long engagement with learners - despite many of the challenges that come with sustaining inquiry over such a period of time. Nonetheless, educators are uniquely positioned to conduct inquiry over longer timescales.
Abraham’s academic success was inextricable from his ability to develop and sustain positive relationships with adults
An inverse of this statement is fascinating to consider, too: Educators' pedagogical success is inextricable from their ability to develop and sustain positive relationships with learners.
to pull constructive meaning from a destructive story
Though specific to the context of Abraham's learning, this statement strongly resonates across other intellectual and professional contexts...
Thanks to Bronwyn LaMay for partnering with the Marginal Syllabus and joining us in an annotation conversation during the week of May 22nd. Click here for additional information about our annotathon in partnership with Educator Innovator, including a webinar on Tuesday, 5/31 at 7p ET.
Thanks to Educator Innovator for partnering with the Marginal Syllabus and hosting this week-long annotathon! We're most appreciative of Liana Gamber-Thompson at Educator Innovator and Christina Cantrill at the National Writing Project for guiding this collaborative effort forward. And, of course, a special thank you to Sangita Shrestova and her By Any Media Necessary co-authors for partnering with us for this annotathon and related webinar.
This excerpt from Dr. Christopher Emdin's book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education is the focal text for the Marginal Syllabus' annotathon in March. From March 27th through 31st, educators are invited to participate in an annotation conversation using the platform Hypothesis; additional information and directions for joining this conversation are here.
sparking
And wires spark - "rewire" is very generative as a guiding metaphor - well done!
could be modified
The importance of adaptation - rather than uniform adoption - is so important, and speaks to trust in educator agency and co-design, using artifacts from this text as objects that move across boundaries, that influence emergent practice, and that don't presume "one right way" of a lock-step formula.
awakener
What a term! Perhaps we should use this more as we describe the kind of emergent learning that occurs through open and collaborative web annotation. What is awakened through this process of open learning, and who are the awakeners (such as authors) that mediate the process?
we are diving back into annotation
Another big thank you! As I've mentioned on Twitter, your course's "re/turn" to a previous Marginal Syllabus conversation (from October) is what Joe, Jeremy, and I hoped would happen over time - that educators would find conversations and texts that resonate with their interests and courses, and then join the text-based conversation via ongoing annotation. This turns the text-as-conversation into an open educational resource (OER), and - like you - we hope other educators and courses revisit these conversations to support their own learning.
a significant jump-start to that sense of belonging to a community, both within the course and beyond it.
I've had students say similar things about using Hypothesis to read together. I'd like to explore the relationship between open/collaborative web annotation and community-building... many questions to consider...
their reflections that week posted to their own blogs were filled with connections they made between Dewey’s work, John Seely Brown’s, and the research report/agenda for Connected Learning
Awesome. Is it possible to connect with some of these posts and perspectives?
scaffolding between the texts and supportive approaches
This is important, and in my teaching I've been careful to include web annotation in both private (group) and public modes so that learners find comfort with different approaches and can come to appreciate some of the scaffolding that you describe.
Amazing
You're very welcome, and we're appreciative of your willingness to merge formal course activities with the more open-ended and interest-driven approach to educator learning via Marginal Syllabus.
to highlight things they noticed and that raised questions for them
A publicly visible and annotated syllabus is a great practice, and something I'll incorporate into courses - great idea!
about the power of annotation
This is quickly going to become a bit meta... :)
Research Writing Rewired Lessons That Ground Students’ Digital Learning
The preface to this book was featured as a Marginal Syllabus flash mob conversation on Wednesday, Feb 22 in partnership with Dawn Reed and Troy Hicks. Our thanks to Dawn and Troy for joining the Marginal Syllabus as author-discussants, and view our annotation conversation here.
while collaboratively annotating
I appreciate how, for some publicly engaged scholars, collaborative web annotation is becoming a frequent characteristic of social reading and professional learning.
Overall, this article was a fantastic read
And I'm pleased to read this!
identity
What do you mean by identity?
A good game, and therefore, good learning continues to give power to the player/learner through opportunities to contribute to the design and content of the game/learning.
As I suggest in the conclusion to Teacher Pioneers which we read during C1, same goes for classrooms and schools. Co-design, distributed power, and agency are really important.
This safe start then allows players to feel like they have control over their situation and frees up their ability to then think through how to properly use the tools that are already known to help with unknown situations.
Very similar to the focus on tutorials that we read during C1.
were also tools that can be harnessed by teachers and learners to increase the power of learning.
Which is why his design principles are exemplified by certain (digital) games, but are not only afforded by games.
a laundry list of good things that make up good games.
His design principles (which we briefly touched during C1) are also useful, though do keep in mind that features change over time as new technologies and practices emerge.
written by James Paul Gee himself
This was an early piece from Gee about games and learning, I'm glad you read it.
and it provides plenty of further research in the references section to further my study of The Sims game franchise.
Sounds like a solid plan moving forward - you've identified a game, related affinity spaces, and some literature - time to dig deep!
interaction and negotiation with their classmates, rather than being ‘relegated to skill and drill and remedial tasks”
This echoes Gee from C1.
is it’s participatory culture
Is this Price's observation or your analysis of her article based upon what we read during C2?
and conducting my affinity space project about a Sims affinity space
Great decision, and thanks for mentioning here.
into other settings. Cloud’s design extends into fan culture, which adopts him to fan art, manga, and many other representations.
Great connection here to C2 readings about fan cultures and affinity spaces.
The player must learn the game’s battle system (left)
Echoes of Gee and tutorials that scaffold familiarity with a new system.
it immediately caught my attention
I'm glad you're selecting to read scholarship based upon personal interest and play history - very important.
many limitations with VR including the cost and the need for high-end system to get the full experience.
Yes, common equity-oriented concerns associated with cost, access, and who gets to participate will always confront new technologies (whether VR, Tesla cars, etc.).
Apparently something already exists!
This happens to me with research all the time. I wonder about a research question or a method, consider how awesome some study would be... and then after asking around a bit, come to learn it's already been done in X way, by Y people, and that they're now onto project Z. At least you know!
but that has been the extent of my experience with VR so far
Same with me.
that the criterion used for evaluating emotional response
That's helpful, thanks for including. Having not yet read these studies, it would seem (although I'm making an assumption) that data about affect is rather different (though perhaps complementary to) observations of affect described in Stevens and colleagues' ethnography... perhaps?
people like success, they like challenge that leads to success, they like gaining understanding.
And this would be evident through some type, or types, of biometric data?
the more the system knows about the user’s detailed emotions
It seems like this is already taking a rather narrow view of game, as something a person plays perhaps in isolation from others? The agency of the "system" seems more important than the player/s.
(Chabbal, Conati, & Maclaren)
If you're going to cite like this, may as well go all the way and include the year for APA formatting.
Research in this field is still being developed
I'm curious - what your interest in this area of research?
I explored two articles
Way to read deeply and beyond the required scope of a typical scholarly critique, much appreciated!
most effective
I'm curious - what does effective mean in this context?
What the study did uncover are relevant questions around the social dimensions of using game play in adult learning.
I appreciate that you're highlighting a limitation of the study. What counts as social dimensions, from either the perspective of K&L or in your opinion?
in a search for games in corporate training.
I'm glad you're reading literature that combines course content with professional interests and responsibilities, great idea.
As a math person,
Caro Williams and I wrote a brief for NCTM in 2014 about video games and math education, check it out here.
I, myself, am not experienced enough in the teaching field to have data myself,
Why not? What counts as data? And why wouldn't you have various forms of data to support instructional decision-making? Stories are powerful forms of data, perhaps more so than standardized test scores or whatever so-called "objective" data says something about learning.
I still question the effectiveness of educational games and technology.
And I hope you continue to do so after the conclusion of this course, too!
that technology very often attributes to educational games
I'm not sure what you mean by this... can you clarify?
different sites
With an article that's a decade old, I'm curious how many of these sites and games are still around.
is statistics from the games and effectiveness
Statistics such as? And effectiveness as measured by...?
and then some that fail at teaching material
And why might this occur?
I am now questioning what type of game is best
And perhaps also the pedagogical practices that usefully enact game-based learning?
This article
In future scholarly critiques, it might be useful to your reader to include article title, author, and citation information.
eliminated the tension
In other words, could your team have failed?
in terms of which puzzle item to look over
Yeah, I've thought a bit about escape rooms, and I'm not sure they're games as much as very elaborate puzzles. I'm curious how your experience and analysis squares with my assessment of puzzles vs games from the Conclusion to Teacher Pioneers you read during C1.
the way assumed roles between people can exhibit strong continuity between game play and work
Nice connection to the cycle readings.
It was a team-building exercise.
This is a useful bit of context, thanks for sharing and connecting this professional experience with your coursework.
is an “Escape the Room” game at Engima Escape Rooms in Boulder, CO
It's great that you experienced an escape room and included this as your play journal!
requires copious amounts of research, administrative work, and faculty support
Yeah, this is a narrative about capacity building in support of game-based learning, less (perhaps) a recipe for "how to do X."
theory of games for learning,
Likely very similar to our course.
really comes down to telling a memorable (and therefore persuasive) story of a successful adoption of GBL in higher education
Yup, this article was featured in a special issue on games in higher education. Not sure if you noticed, but I also had an article in that same issue (under my previous name, Holden).
Herro & Clark, 2016
So pleased you read this article! Dani Herro is a good friend and colleague, we've done a bit of work together.
professional forums
I'm curious how platforms like Hypothesis, and more broadly the social practices afforded by open annotation, help create the conditions for new types of professionally-relevant (online) forums. I think a stance toward engagement with the political dimensions of learning is complementary to the work organizations like Hypothesis who are building tools and partnerships for a more democratic, peer-reviewed web. https://youtu.be/QCkm0lL-6lc
to prompt and engage a dialogue
One means of engaging such dialogue is through the public annotathon scheduled for February 27th through March 3rd, and which will occur right here - in the margins of this pre-print turned blog post. See my post for more information about the annotathon, and how to join and use Hypothesis.
This pre-publication version of "The Learning Sciences in a New Era of U.S. Nationalism" is the featured text of an annotathon, scheduled for Monday, February 27th through Friday, March 3rd, in collaboration with The Politics of Learning Writing Collective and Cognition & Instruction. Thanks to Thomas Phillip, Susan Jurow, Shirin Vossoughi, Megan Bang, and Miguel Zavala for graciously agreeing to participate in the annotathon of their article, and to Noel Enyedy and Jamie Gravell for their assistance in organizing and promoting the event.
Questions can be addressed here via Page Notes (a type of annotation attached to an entire document/URL, and not in-line), or via Twitter (@remikalir).
if anyone knows of any other please let me know!
Take to Twitter and crowdsource additional resources, too.
maybe like a Sim City type of game?…Or perhaps a graphic designer type of video game. Or character design for a skating game.
These thoughts address a core concern - what are artistic practices, and what types of games (irrespective of content, and perhaps because of certain play mechanics) support those practices?
that creation was missing from its mission
Indeed, it seems like any game design platform (we'll read about some during C3) would be quite relevant to arts education.
transfer
What does this mean, particularly after reading Stevens et al during C2?
that was a pretty cool thing to see for students.
Why? What about your professional practice as an art educator makes this a particularly generative aspect of game play?
the district could not afford to hire an art teacher or to supplement a teacher who did not have the appropriate funds to teach color theory the correct way
this is an interesting bit of context within which to design and implement a game
I have not ever heard of the gaming strategy taking place within an art classroom and I wanted to hear how and why it was used
This is great motivation to select interest-driven scholarship for your critiques.
A good piece. Even the hubby enjoyed this one. See you in the forums.
Sean is pretty active on Twitter, you might consider sharing this with him (Constance just moved to a new university/job, and wouldn't likely respond via a social media platform like Twitter).
These players rely on the forums to not only get better, but to delve as deep as they can to experience a virtual world.
A reflection of affinity space participation, and the multiple settings and social relations that surround and support ongoing game play.
Ironically enough, gamers sound a whole lot like scientists when in a heated debate about their content.
Is it ironic given what we've been reading in our course to date?
From my own forum discussions
Where? Some context here would be useful
posters
players who posted to WoW forums?
Studio Habits of the Mind
What is the foundation of these studio habits? Can you tell us a bit more about this?
by Constance Steinkuehler and Sean Duncan
Constance, as I likely mentioned elsewhere, was my boss at UW for a number of years when we ran the Games Learning Society Conference and Playful Learning initiative. Sean does great game-based learning work (and also came through the GLS crew at UW). Good friends and colleagues.
Goal-orientated instructions is certainly something I will think about more as I choose games for my own students to play.
I'm pleased to learn this, and establishing connections to professional practice is an important element of our course.
means that less learning (at least deep, cognitive learning) is taking place.
according to this study
game-design
I'll be curious to read about your responses to C3 readings.
The authors determined that something as simple as instructions in computer games could result in different "learning" styles being triggered in their learners.
While this is an important finding, it seems as though the core message stands irrespective of the tool. In other words, take out (digital) game and replace with any other tool or instructional method, and the importance of clear instructions and sustained engagement stand.
upon completion of the game
With this style of research, games are positioned as an intervention to improve, and prove, a very specific idea. There are pros and cons to this type of research.
an ECG (educational computer game)
what a fascinating term having already read, in our course, much literature that suggests games (both digital and others) can, under certain circumstances, be educational experiences and support particular learning practices and outcomes.
designers
What do you mean by this? I'm curious if your thoughts about design will change based upon C3 readings...
the same way an affinity space does.
Yes, you're making sharp connections here among Gee and Hayes' theory about affinity spaces, and seeing how those types of relations are fostered at multiple scales: a) in individual classrooms and b) among a network of educators who are all experimenting with this platform/tech/approach to learning.
I couldn’t contribute much
Though it sounds like you were able to make some astute observations of activity.
a very niche community
Would you call this Twitter chat one expression of an affinity space?
a role-playing game that helps teachers manage, motivate and engage their students
It seems that class craft is what some people call a "skin" that provides thematic elements and, in some casts, strategies to continue supporting what educators already do (manage, motivate, engage students).
I decided to try to find one that had content that more closely matched my interests
I'm pleased to learn that you're choosing to play games based upon your interests and then observing learning through an interest-driven lens.
As an elementary school teacher it would be nice to put “playing video games together” in a bag of tricks to help increase affection, like in siblings, and develop bonds between children
There are so many reasons to guide implementation in your classroom, many of which you can find easily online or via interactions with certain communities on platforms like Twitter. This is also why we have the affinity spaces project, to support people in engaging with activities relevant to their interests and professional practices.
and the opportunity for learning behaviors to turn conflicts into learning moments.
Many people in our course are starting to parse the dynamics of cooperative vs competitive game play, and your summary here contributes some important points to consider.
observed an increase in the reported affection
Observed like the methods Stevens and colleagues employed to study shared activity? And how did their observations demonstrate an "increase"?
studied the effect of coplaying video games had on siblings in terms of their levels of reported affection and conflicts
This is a really nice complement to Stevens and colleagues' ethnography from C2.
periodical
Article? The term does carry different connotations, so specificity in this respect is important.
that the game was doing the teaching
I'm glad you're questioning this idea, and reading research that suggests learning emerges through social and technical relations, rather than primarily because of what a tool delivers.
and improves cognitive abilities by task completion.
How do you know this happens? What are the indicators that suggest such learning in taking place?
a lot of positive emotions
Why is it important that these emotions are positive?
is that it makes you think.
What do you mean by this?
“How games can be integrated into education to make learning more interesting for children?”.
A question we'll be engaging all semester, and my conclusion to the book Teacher Pioneers (which we read during C1) begins to provide some answers.
many game developers don’t provide gamers with tools that they can use for learning.
Does this presume that people can't learn from games irrespective of developers' goals? I would suggest many games can teach players something, and some games which are designed according to specific learning principles (such as those outlined by Gee in C1) create conditions where specific learning experiences are more likely - does that make sense?
Machinima videos
If you're interested in making your blog posts more multimodal, consider including those videos here as embedded in your posts
it is possible to write by using music, videos, images, and other digital content
yes, L&K's emphasis on new literacies expands upon more traditional notions of reading and writing.
Lankshear & Knobel (2011), claim that digital remixing is a new form of writing (p. 99).
I'm a big fan of L&K and their text is a foundational anchor of INTE 5340 Learning with Digital Stories.
in the modern environment
I'm curious what you mean by modern environment... digital aspects? Online only? Something else?
You just have to take your chances
Take your chances, yes, though the risk of failure is not too high-stakes, unlike school.
Little cooperation, a lot of competition
You've got peers who are also exploring cooperative and competitive game play dynamics, I hope this emerges as an ongoing conversation across our various game play experiences.
I died a lot.
Important connections here to Gee's analysis of games and apprenticeship which we read during C1.
You can see my first experience with the game in the video below
This is a nice way of creating a multimodal post, thanks for including this video!
Magic: The Gathering(MTG).
I began playing Magic in middle school, and got pretty serious over a few years, to the point where I was entered in some local competitions, had a few complete sets (I forget what a version of cards was called...), and had developed some pretty serious battle-tested decks. I liked playing Magic a lot.
need to tear down the current educational institution to then voice their ideas of the benefits of games in learning?
Perhaps because schools and schooling is, by design, inequitable?
in proven results and data.
Such as?
to engage more thoroughly with the content.
How does "thorough engagement" relate to learning?
validity
What do you mean by validity here?
and simulations and games provide the elixir
At face value, having not read this article (yet), I am always quite resistant to claims that games (or simulations) are so-called "answers." As I argued in my conclusion (which read read during C1), games and game-based learning may be useful for various reasons (like encouraging agency and creativity), but as a silver bullet, I'm always a bit dubious.
that I have had great success with in various classrooms across content and skill levels
I'm curious to learn more about these previous teaching experiences.
peace to games
I'm curious, having read your post, how notions of peace define outcomes of play or characterize the game play experience - in other words, peaceful means vs peaceful outcomes.
Annotate
As another example of the trend in annotated news, there are many things to like about this example, and some notable drawbacks as well. Pros: More interactive than NYTimes' previous annotation efforts, nudges reader use of layered commentary, content of annotation layer encourages perspective-taking and reminds reader that political is personal (and vice versa). I also think it's interesting that interview processes and outcomes become the content of the annotation layer. Cons: Confusing how annotations (i.e. refugee contributions via interview) are related to specific anchor text, the "Notes" are static (no ability for reader response, no links out to related information), and annotation "Notes" don't have tags (limiting association with other documents and annotated content). That's my rough assessment of an important step forward.
Produced
The NYTimes' in-house annotation efforts are iterating rather quickly - this approach is more interactive than what was publishing a week ago, yet still isn't participatory or open. I'm eager to see how their efforts continue to grow, whether or not they'll jump to a third party platform, and if they'll discuss their process publicly.
asked refugees in Jordan
To learn about these refugees - who they are, where they have come from, etc. - the reader must click on highlighted anchor text and read the annotation. The UX makes interaction with the annotation layer an essential quality of the reader's experience.
vigilant2
The numbering convention is similar to footnotes, and reminds me of commentary about similarities among annotation, hyperlinks, and footnotes.
Trump
Test annotating the new NYTimes dynamic "note."
for their responses to the president’s decision
I'm curious about the relationship between interviewing and annotating. Su "asked refugees... for their responses," with answers then anchored to specific parts of the EO. What's the process linking new content (refugee responses) to the anchor text?
or the telegraph as personal devices.
Of course, today the telegraph is a personal device, however irrational our use of such mobile technologies - from the ill-informed tweet to the use of such devices for political surveillance.
to take the broader, or social view
Many critics and theorists today would suggest that this broader is also cultural and - given that we're reading and discussing a text that was first written 118 years ago - historical.
Here individualism and socialism are at one
This strikes me as such a radical statement in light of America's current political earthquake.
through the agency of the school, at the disposal of its future members
Given what's happening at the turn of 2017 with public education, and in both K-12 and higher education contexts, it's challenging to appreciate "the agency of the school," particularly if such agency is meant to embolden - and not "destroy" - our democracy.
his
Even though I know this text was published in 1899, the gendered language conventions of Dewey's text really stand out.
Over the next year, we will share that vision in this space. We hope you will follow along with us.
I'm looking forward to this, and will be following along - often by jumping into these margins and inviting subsequent conversation.
and modeling the information environment of the future
This seems to echo a previous EDUCAUSE article on next generation digital learning environments.
must design and model new ways of working on the web
Because I'm adding these thoughts via public annotation - and have been thinking a bit about how designs for social and collaborative web annotation might inform higher education practices associated with collaboration, research, and peer review - here's something I've written with Jeremy Dean about web annotation as disruptive media.
but for furthering public education as well
Essential viewing from Robin DeRosa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpOP6RZXzXQ&t=3s
on how to best use and critique the information environments that students inhabit on a daily basis
Higher education systems and dominant pedagogies too often entrench a passive approach to students reading a static web, rather than writing (and yes, critiquing) a more dynamic web.
And the earliest users of both the Internet and the web were academics
Though as Audrey Watters and others remind us, it's also important to remember that the history of the internet's development (by academics) was a result of military funding and partnerships.
drew his inspiration from academic culture, with its dense interweaving of cross-references and annotations
Essential reading: Vannevar Bush's As We May Think (and the Hypothesis annotations layered atop this version of his essay are pretty great, too).
The web, on the other hand, is vibrant and agile, fueled by innovation and creative destruction
I've found such advocacy rather short-sighted. Such logic requires we accept that a given tool (the web, broadly defined) can be both appreciated and applied outside the/any political economy, social context and inequality, as well as institutional power. In addition to the oft-cited adage by William Gibson that "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed," I'm reminded of the important work by Chris Gilliard on digital redlining (resources here, and a great introductory article) that expressly critiques the notion of a neutral web that is - by default - vibrant, agile, and innovative as a form of beneficence.
And at the center of this decline is the web as it has come to be.
I'm reminded here of an argument made by Keri Facer in her book Learning Futures: Education, Technology, and Social Change. Briefly, Facer suggests that patterns associated with people's social uses of new technologies - what she calls sociotechnical formations - are divergent, often contradictory to the intention of designers, and yet can be directed toward more equitable means of use, expression, and impact.
primed to keep us clicking, watching, and pulling-to-refresh
Something I haven't thought about enough, and that I would welcome to unpack (perhaps here) through conversation, is the extent to which certain "recent technologies" can function as a counterweight to the so-called attention economy.
but only half read it
I would suggest that the affordances of web annotation can help to mitigate such a circumstance. If I'm going to respond publicly and with a participatory technology that encourages in-line and contextualized commentary, the quality of my reading (and subsequent responses) better be more than half-assed.
something depressingly familiar is about to happen
Or perhaps something uniquely engaging might happen if people chose to gather here in the margins, read socially, and annotate this article as a means of discussion - let's hope so!
participatory culture
is this a general term connoting the fact that our everyday media is social and participatory, or a direct reference to "participatory culture" (a concept studied and critique by various DML folks)? and perhaps that distinction doesn't matter?
networks
only as noun? i'm always intrigued by works that carry multiple meanings as both nouns and verbs... "network" can simultaneously be a noun and a verb, making it a more hybrid and complex concept than the plural noun (networks).