Learning Spaces Panel

1
Learning Spaces

• Learning Spaces Panel
• lt learningspaces.org gt
• LIDC
• February 11, 2005

2
Learning Spaces Lessons

• Norm Friesen
• LIDC, Feb. 11, 2005

3
Presuppositions

• Use terms that reflect our experience of the
  technology (e.g. worlds, immersion, en-gagement)
  rather than the workings of the tech-nology (e.g.
  sender, receiver, interactivity, use)
• Recognize the heterogeneity of educational needs
  and contexts
• The core or focal practices of education should
  be subjected to research in terms of their
  longevity and adaptability to new technological
  forms

4
Presupposition Computer as Interlocutor vs.
Lifeworld

• I believe that conversation is the wrong model
  for dealing with a computer When you're
  interacting with a computer, you are not
  conversing with another person. You are exploring
  another world. (Walker, Autodesk, 1994)
• the computer opens up "a space of existence" --a
  space which contains "virtual objects," such as
  "windows, icons, folders and the like" (Winograd,
  1996)

5
Presuppositions (Educa-tional) Tech as Enframing

• Gestell installation, emplacement, set-up
• The assigning or appointing of a definite place
• Collects and assembles the various ways in which
  everything, human beings included, is 'cornered'
  (gestellt) and set in place
• Question the "set-up" of computer and Internet
  technologies in education

6
How to understand this?
7
From this perspective...

• The power of educational technologies lies not in
  how they resemble, augment or amplify processes
  of cognition.
• It is more likely found in the coincidence of
  their formalizing enframing power with aspects
  of the teaching practices subject-matter
  germane to formalization.

8
How to understand this? Borgmann

• Brilliance excludes noise heightens
  attractive features
• Richness its ideal limit is encyclopaedic
  completeness
• Pliable endlessly adjustable versus
  encumberance and confinement
• Discontinuous Disposable experientially in
  terms of its context

9
How to understand this?

• Very different social world almost all things
  are accomplished explicitly
• Commitment
• Vulnerability
• Disposition
• Personal identity is constructed and performed
  through writing
• Also, often through incidental aspects of the
  software

10
How to understand this?

• Question Forum Week 1 Discussion
• 1. Andy Smith (Sun, Sep. 2, 1999, 1034)
•      2. Andy Smith (Mon, Sep. 3, 1999, 1612)
• 3. Andy Smith (Mon, Sep. 3, 1999, 1944)
•      4. Maria Plummer (Tue, Sep. 4, 1999, 1050)
  
•       5. Diane Hayes (Tue, Sep. 4, 1999,
  1447)
• Hi!
• My name is Jayne Spencer. I am Dr. Smith's
  teaching assistant in this course. I will be
  participating in the discussions and will assist
  Dr. Smith in marking some of your assignments.

11
How to understand this?

• Very different social world - almost all things
  are accomplished explicitly
• Commitment
• Vulnerability
• Disposition
• Personal identity is constructed and performed
  through writing

12
Writing as Formalization Performance

• Creating managing self-presentation online
• Teacher, Student presence
• Visibility and accessibility online the act of
  posting as paramount
• Importance of expressive dimensions in online
  discussion
• Emoticons, exclamation marks, etc.
• Bullet points, paragraph size

13
Supplement, not Supplant

• Dissection example
• Foregrounds procedure
• Simplifies makes explicit
• Removes risk
• Removes variation
• History Genres (practices, artifacts)
• Expectations, conventions, common knowledge