Final Thoughts

What a journey this semester has been! I signed up for EDUC 578 expecting to gain access to quantitatively-based empirical research supporting (or actually, not supporting) technology use in the classroom. I didn’t expect to be allowed to bring my laptop to class, let alone to use it as the basis of my learning. When a complete 180 breezed in in the form of Professor Heil, I knew I was in for a radical paradigm shift.

Instead of spending the semester burying my nose in books, I have spent the semester building a whole new cyber body. I now have a living, breathing persona in the World Wide Web. Instead of writing pages upon pages of reviews on articles for a single professor to read (that I, myself, would never read again), I have spent the semester cultivating tools that I use daily and take my free time to show off to friends. I made friends with blogger, building a blog that is part class reflection, part soul searching ( read BYOG and Procreation). I also stretched my technological and creative limits by exploring blogger’s dynamic views and customization options with Christina’s Creative Writing Cookbook which I highlighted in my final reflection project. I’ve opened a twitter account, built a PLN, become an active member of twitter groups in my field, diigo’d my heart out and songified everything.

But not everything I’ve learned has been about technology. In fact, I would say that the majority of my knowledge growth I’ve experienced in this course is explicitly not about technology. Thanks to Daniel Pink, I’ve given more thought to the legitimate importance of beauty in business and in life. Class discussions related to Clayton Christensen’s Disrupting Class have changed the way I view the future of education. For a start, I have a newfound respect for online education. Thanks to our professor, I have questioned society’s obsession with grades for the first time in my life. I’ve have spent time inside the walls of a high school for pregnant and parenting teens that gave me a new lens with which to view the purpose of education (see my full reflection on that experience below). I spent a week exploring my passion for yoga which lead to an ongoing conversation with God. How cool is that? In my syllabus this semester I told my students that their success as students was the measure of my success as a teacher. In giving myself an A, I’m giving Professor Heil an A+…and I know how much he treasures letter grades ;)

Checking in from out of town

After reading, I hope you get the double entendre of this pic

I'm posting this because I think it will bring a quick smile to our professor Heil's face. I left sunny San Diego on Thursday immediately after my final class of the semester. I was home bound for the first time in over half a year. My students' final papers were graded, my final papers and assignment were turned in and I was free!...So what am I doing here? Well it's actually not even the first time I've checked in since coming home. First I wanted to show off my blog and cookbook to my dad. We had a long discussion on how I could bling up the new website on teaching Arabic students that I plan to create after I finish my Master's thesis. This is not part of the project, I'm doing it because I want to share what I'm learning. I've found myself periodically checking in on  my classmates' blogs as well. I'm anxious to see everyone's final reflection projects! I've also been checking in with my ESL twitter peeps...just because I want to. And I guess therein, is the point of this post. I am no longer checking in, posting and generally participating in the cyber world because it's part of a class, a grade, an obligation. I'm doing it because I want to. Because I have found myself intrinsically motivated to keep on keepin' on. When I went to show my dad my blog and cookbook, I wasn't logged in to my bookmarks so I simply googled myself. And guess what? I was the top 3 results! And that's when it hit me--I'm no longer a visitor, I'm a bonafide resident! Man, it feels good to be home.

Digital Reflection Project

A couple of things I ran out of time before I got a chance to mention...the site I used for the cookbook was blogger with a dynamic view. The device I used for the recording of my digital reflection project was Jing (a new obsession of mine!) Thanks for listening :)

Observation-Lindsay Community High School



Students at Lindsay school share lunchtime with their children.
If you're interested in learning more about Lindsay Community HS
for pregnant and parenting teens, here is a link
to a recent article about the school.
Photo: Sam Hodgson

When professor Heil set the assignment for a class visit to any school utilizing technology, I imagined myself spending a day comfortably seated in the back of a classroom at some wealthy, teched-out school. My preconception couldn't have been further from the reality of my visit to Lindsay Community High School. Lindsay is a school for pregnant and parenting teens located in a intimidating corner of downtown San Diego.  What I noticed first when I timidly entered a classroom was not the Smart board on the wall but the newborn cradled next to her teen mom. Was there technology in use? Once I was able to focus on anything besides the alien concept of babies in the classroom, I noticed that why yes, there was. At the time we entered, the students were in the process of working on blog responses to a recent reading they had done. The atmosphere was simultaneously autonomous and collaborative. Students were able to work at their own pace (good thing too, when one must sporadically pause to feed or sooth a baby) but the sense of community was palpable.

I must admit that while on our school tour my intrigue with the dramatic life story of our young, heavily pregnant guide (a former graduate of LCHS) overshadowed my interest in anything technology related. It wasn't until after leaving the school, while digesting the experience along with an egg salad sandwich, that I came to the realization that this particular school was the poster school for disruptive innovation.

Each of the students have such unique academic needs. They come in ages that in no way correspond to a set grade level. It would be nearly impossible for a mainstream high school to meet their needs. This is exactly the situation that calls for modularity--individually customized lessons that target the individual, not the group. I'm not saying that these girls could get a better education working individually from home, because school is so much more than curricular; it's social. The community built at LCHS has LITERALLY saved lives. Our young guide believes it saved hers. But to have the opportunity to use school for that community-oriented purpose, without sacrificing learning, would be ideal. This must be what Christensen, Horn and  Johnson were getting at in their book Disrupting Class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns. Internally, I have been fighting with the concept of customization in schools because I thought it would equivocate isolation and loss of community. Finally, I see how the two worlds could merge with schools being brick-and-mortar institutions of socialization and computerized learning being an academic support system.

Feeling the love from my PLN!

I realized something great today...I really do have a PLN! I'll admit I started this journey just going through the motions. Sure I'll get a twitter account (insert eyeroll), sure I'll start a blog (insert sigh), etc, etc. After a rousing #ellchat session tonight that left me feeling heard and inspired, I came to a great realization: I really do have a PLN; a network of peers in the ESLindustry that I am sharing with and learning from on a daily basis. When I found myself stoked to be free at the time of the weekly #ellchat today, I realized that my participation in my PLN is no longer an assignment (eyeroll, sigh) but a genuine interest (cheer). I have made real connections with people who I recognize and have become accustomed to interacting with. I'm sure I'll be keeping it up once the semester ends for my own personal and professional purposes.

My "cookbook" got favorited!

After finally finishing my creative writing blog I forced myself to take the plunge and put it out there in the twitterverse. I even stepped outside my #usdedu comfort zone and added some other groups I have been active in or lurking around. I was surprized to see that the blog immidiately got 100s of views (which I know is a dismal number in cyberworld but I was impressed nonetheless). Even more surprizing to me was that my twitter post on the cookbook was "favorited" by quite a few "strangers" on twitter. I put strangers in quote marks because I see no direct link to them through any of the groups I'm active with. The power of networking is truly amazing and EDUC 578 has shown me that in ways I may never have allowed myself experience.

The Cookbook is up!

Though it is still very much a work in progress, I am pleased to announce that Christina's Creative Writing Cookbook is up and running! The website is a compilation of creative writing activities I have been doing with my adult ESL students at USD's English Language Academy this semester. I call them weekly writing warm ups (www's). I create the prompts to use as a warmer once per week. Their purpose is to spend class time focused on writing fluency as opposed to accuracy and to  get students to write just for the joy of it. So far it has been quite a success. My class even demanded double www's this week! Check it out here. I'd love to hear your feedback.

A Student-Centric School...

“By keeping students at the center of one’s classroom, a teacher can encourage and inspire students to seek out knowledge and to strive for understanding at a deeper level. Through this process, students see a greater relevance for and a stronger connection to the subject at hand. Through student-centered instruction, our students can achieve independent minds and the capacity to make educational decisions and value judgments” (Brown, 2008, p. 5).

Materials

In a word: individualized. Not only is the curriculum unique but the pacing is individualized. Most people may immediately think computerized when the word individualized pops up. In my student-centered educational utopia however, this would not be the case. I love this quote from edutopia.com about the misconception about computer-based learning for transformation:

To implement computer-based learning in a way that transforms the classroom into a student-centric one, we must heed the right lessons from understanding disruption. Cramming computers in the back of classrooms or in computer labs as a tool for the existing classroom model or as a subject in and of itself won't do the trick. Instead, we must find areas of nonconsumption to deploy computer-based learning where it will be unencumbered by existing education processes. Once planted in these areas, it can take root, begin to improve, and, over time, transform the way students learn.

Though technology such as computer programs offering information taught to various learning styles would be available, I would encourage teacher-training on adapting to learning styles. Peer teaching cohorts would also be foundational to the system. What I mean by that is that students are given the choice and opportunity to study and master what interests them. The end result would often be teaching what one has learned or creating materials for a future student to study.

Teachers

In the student-centric model of education teachers step down from their role as “sage on the stage” and transition into a less (let’s admit it) egotistical “guide on the side”. As described on openeducation.net, “In the student centered classroom, the teacher is a coach and mentor, a support person who troubleshoots and problem solves when students need such help.” As much work would be individualized there would be need for a great shift in teacher’s paradigms from seeing their role as a sole distributor of knowledge to more of  a coach whose job is to encourage students to build their own knowledge.

Physical layout/Environment

Rather than rows of desks facing the teacher’s “stage” like this:

a student-centered class may look more like this:

However I would also encourage heavy peer-teaching. I firmly believe the adage that “The best way to learn is to teach.” We could showcase our students’ strengths and build confidence and encourage accountability by forming peer teaching groups where a student has the chance to teach where they excel.

Assessment/Grades

In student-centered learning curriculum and assessment are centered on meaningful performances in real-world contexts. The attached pdf “Characteristics of Effective Instruction: Student-Centered Learning” states that in student-centered classes “Students are empowered to use prior knowledge to construct new learning.” Since all students’ prior knowledge is unique, students would be judged by improvement for their own unique starting points not by where they fall into a class curve. In general, think projects rather than tests as the main medium of gauging student learning.

Now for the tough question…would I want to teach in a student-centric school? 

I’ll admit that it takes a lot of getting used to stepping out of the spotlight as a teacher. I often feel guilty in a class where there is so much student interaction going on I feel like more of a fly on the wall than focal point. But I always have to remind myself that when students are actively engaged in the process of creating knowledge they are connecting with the skill/material much more than when are passively consuming regurgitated knowledge.  It takes a great guide to build that kind of autonomy. I imagine teaching in a student-centric environment would be a little like watching your child roll away on a 2-wheel bicycle for the first time. There is the bitter-sweet pull at your heart that your hand is not needed any more, but the great joy in knowing you have helped someone fly their own ship. What could feel more rewarding than that?

Some great resources for building student-centric learning environments:

http://www.openeducation.net/2008/09/28/teacher-centered-vs-student-centered-classrooms/

http://www.edutopia.org/student-centric-education-technology#

http://www.publicagenda.org/discussion-guides/creating-student-centered-schools

Twitter inspired my lesson plans for this week!

Curricular freedom has to be one of my absolute favorite parts of teaching in the Adult English as a Second Language (ESL) field. When I realized that I had some space to fill in my course schedule next week, where did I go for inspiration? Twitter! I browsed recent posts from my “twuddies” (got it? twitter + buddies=twuddies. I’m putting it out there now) at #engchat, #ellchat and others in the ESL field.  In less than 5 minutes I came across a tweet with a link to an interesting looking article titled “Change of language, change of personality?” Check it out for yourself  here. In a nutshell, the article discusses the possibility of one’s personality shifting depending on the language they happen to be interacting in. My 620R students are rapidly approaching what I would deem proficiency so I thought this could be interesting topic for them to explore.  I also thought it would be fun for me to get to dig into their heads a bit about how they feel they are being represented as their English-speaking selves.  I created some discussion questions to lead into the article then we delved into it together.

Here were the pre-reading questions I created to lead into the text, beginning with interpretation/discussion of a Czech proverb:

"Learn a new language and get a new soul."

-Czech proverb

1.      What is your favorite word in English? What do you like about it?

2.      What is your least favorite word in English? What don’t you like about it?

3.      With whom do you feel most comfortable speaking English?

a.      native English speakers

b.      people who share your native language

c.       other non-native English speakers who do not share your native language

Which of these do you feel least comfortable speaking English to?

4.      When you speak English, do you feel like the language you use is more polite or more direct?

5.      What are some major differences between your native language and English?

6.      Can you think of any words or expressions in your language that are difficult to translate into English?

7.      Are there any words or expressions that you use a lot in your native language but do not use very often in English?

8.      How would you describe yourself using 3 adjectives?

9.      Would you use those same adjectives to describe your “English-speaking self”?

10.  So…do you feel like your personality in English is any different that your personality in your native language?

If so, how?

What do you think is the reason for this difference?

After reading I asked students to answer these 3 questions:

1.      What is the author’s question?

2.      What answer does he propose?

3.      Do you agree with his opinion?

I taught the class today and it went over really well! I am excited for our next class when I intend to expand on the topic by allowing my students to choose any other article related to bilingualism to read with guiding questions and then teach to their peer groups. The idea is that the students will be intrinsically motivated by a topic that pertains to their lives directly and then being given freedom to choose a sub-article of their interest. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Google+ Hangouts Rock!

So I had just had to share... I'm so excited about Google + hangouts! After our EDUC 578 meeting I called my dad and demanded to he get a gmail account so we could, well, hangout. Now the babies can see their grandparents any time! This is definitely my most favorite tech tool of the semester. If haven't tried it, you must! Here are some helpful directions on how to get a Google + hangout started.

Disruptive Innovation

Come on, who doesn't root for the underdog?

Our society loves to root for the underdog. This is what makes the idea of disruptive innovation so romantic…it’s the new, unassuming, little guy coming in and bowling over the established, cocky, big guy. Online textbook sale/rental sites are a good example of a disruptor in the world of education. For years university book stores happily plugged along, virtually without competition, ripping off students to no end (can you taste a hint of a bitter former-under grad in that statement?). Then along came companies like abebooks.com (a personal favorite) selling the very same textbooks for a fraction of the price (I’ve gotten required course material for $1 vs. $75 at the Torero store).

In the beginning one may scratch their head and think, “well that’s nice but there’s no way that company can make it selling books for a buck.” Right? Wrong! As Clayton Christensen, the creator of the term disruptive innovation states, “Characteristics of disruptive businesses, at least in their initial stages, can include:  lower gross margins, smaller target markets, and simpler products and services that may not appear as attractive as existing solutions.” What happened is that good old college book stores got too comfortable to the point of stagnation (this is what Christensen refers to as “sustaining innovation”), leaving themselves vulnerable to upheaval from the underdog. And what do you know? The little guy wins!

For all the chart lovers out there.

This week I've decided to go out on a limb and share a piece of my own creative writing...

Procreation

By Christina Andrade

.

The conscious decision to spawn another life form was, if I may share in confidence, quite alien to me. First there is the nine month surrender of one’s body to an alien creature who uses your bladder as a trampoline, causes the exponential expansion of your waistline and has the gall to insist its host abstain from drinking beer! The (inevitable) ensuing initiation into motherhood will rival that of the most notorious fraternities. You will be forced into the handling of diapers filled with abominations that could rival nuclear waste. You will be serenaded with relentless wails- cries which burrow into your ears and pound on your eardrums with the voraciousness of a drug-fueled, heavy-metal superstar. The creature will always be hungry. You will one day find yourself blowing raspberries on your husband’s cheek in the grocery store because you have come that far from reality. You will never, ever, hear the words “thank you.” And yet, you will be filled with a love so profound and expansive you will wonder what it was you did with your life before this creature entered it.  I found it so nice; I’ve done it twice.

Social Media, Networked Learning & Digital Identity

I chose to watch the archived lecture on Social Media, Networked Learning & Digital Identity from Oct. 18, 2011. I chose this particular lecture because my digital identity is something I have become more and more concerned about. Like many people in my generation, I jumped straight on the Myspace.com bandwagon (7 or more years ago now?). Like many college students, for me it was exciting tool to share with the world just how much you were drinking. As adulthood and responsibility loom ever-closer on my horizon, I am more and more aware and cautious of my digital face.

Dr. Alec Couros openned his lecture with a quote that I believe will stick with me for a good, long while: “Google is the new business card”.  As you can imagine, this represents the truth of the times that anything can (and will) be Googled.   

I expected the lecture to be a cautionary of tool warning its observers to cover their digital backs, so to speak. I was wrong. Instead Dr. Couros shared his passion for sharing. A buzzword of the lecture was “openness”. Which I think is exemplified by the following quote from the William and Floretta Hewlett Foundation:

“Open Education is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the World Wide Web in particular provide and extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge.”

In short, knowledge should be free! Couros says our society “commodified” knowledge. Knowledge was protected but has become liberated by the openness of the web.

University education, until the very recent past has represented a form of “commodified” knowledge. You must be a paying student to receive the knowledge. These days, MIT and Stanford are opening up this knowledge. Aside from knowledge, Dr. Couros broke down the reason people attend universities into 4 categories: content, degrees, social life, support. He then layered all of the websites that are filling these needs today (from Yahoo! Answers for support, Wikipedia for content, to Twitter for social life). Degrees, he says, are the last things holding us to universities. And he predicts there will be a way around this in the near future as well. An interesting thought.

Additionally, he talked about “The Barbra Streisand Effect” which basically cautions that the more you try to suppress something, the more it comes out. Again the message: open, open, open.

In the end, Dr. Couros did touch on some cautionary tales of oversharing personally hurting people professionally (he mentioned a Georgian teacher who was suspended for having a photo of herself with beer and wine on a European vacation). His advice for combating this issue can best be summed up by a quote shared from Seth Godin “Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff.” I seem to remember this very advice coming from a certain EDUC 578 professor earlier this semester ;).

I’d like to end this blog with advice from Dr. Couros that weaves together everything I have been learning this semester. He said we have to overcome the inner 2-year-old in you that screams “mine, mine, mine!” If you have read my prior blog posts, you would see that this has been a personal goal I set for myself this semester. Thanks to a former teacher who flipped my world upside down by saying that your value comes not from the knowledge you keep but the knowledge you share, I have made it my goal to fight the screaming toddler in me that wants to own my ideas. This is why I am in the process of creating Christina's Creative Writing Cookbook. In hopes that I can share back just a bit of what the society has shared with me through the web.

B.Y.O.G.

This week our Learning and Technology class was given a “hall pass” of sorts by our incredibly progressive-minded professor, Jeff Heil. All he asked was that we allocate the time we would have usually spent on school work to something driven by passion. I’ll admit--at risk of being called a wanker by my (Australian) husband-- I spent the week cultivating my fledgling relationship with God.

Like many of my acquaintances and even my next-door neighbor, God and I met on the yoga mat. I started yoga a few years ago, not in search of trendy, new age enlightenment but because I had heard about a thing called Bikram which was all the rage for torching calories (literally, it’s 108 degrees in there). My introduction to God came as an added bonus.

From time to time, usually after a particularly intense yoga sessions, I lie in Savasana and we chat. Mostly God will listen to my fears and insecurities then surrounds them with a space so immense that they seem to disappear.  Both me and my problems become so reassuringly small that we fit neatly into the palm of God’s hand.

My God is not your average intimidating man-with-a-long-white-beard apparition. She is surprisingly approachable. Before this week I would be abashed to admit that she is, in fact, just an older version of myself--only cooler, calmer, and infinitely more secure. She knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that everything is going to be alright.

I’ve always harbored an unspoken guilt about my mind’s incredibly narcissistic incantation of the divine spirit. What would God think if I admitted my megalomania? This week I decided it was time to come clean, let God have at me for this gross act of vanity. Wednesday evening, as I settled into a deep Savasana, I waited for God to come to me like she usually does (she says she’s always there, it’s just that this is the only time it is quiet enough to hear her above the noisy din of my mind and ego). As I began my awkward confession, she chuckled and raised an eyebrow playfully. I lay in panic as her chuckles escalated to a roar. “Dear child”, she managed between her guffaws, “wouldn’t it be you that was created in my likeness and not vice versa?” Oh. Riiiight. She’s a sharp one, my God, I like that about her.

And so I come to share what I learned this week; in this life maybe it’s ok to B.Y.O.G (be your own God). 

Christina's Creative Writing Cookbook

In pursuit of my personal goal for the semester (which is to share, share, share), I have created a website for the weekly writing warm-ups I am creating for my Writing 6 class at USD's English Language Academy. Here it is http://christinascreativewritingcookbook.blogspot.com/ !

Hopefully I'll be adding the creative writing activities that I have created thus far in the near future.

Visitors and Residents

As I stepped into the cyber galaxy, blinking like an owl in the sun, I imagined I could hear a collective utterance from its residents, "You're not from around here, are you?"

According to the video  Visitors and Residents, internet users can be classified into two categories; visitors and residents. In the video visitors are described as those who, upon logging out of their email/Facebook/on-line banking, disappear completely. They leave no footprint, no evidence of their residency in the world wide web. In contrast, residents are those who have made a "home" on the web, they leave a footprint, which even when one is logged off, can be seen by others.

Even now with diggo, twitter and blogger accounts, I would consider myself a visitor. Or perhaps a resident-wanna-be. My contribution to the www story is fleeting. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I am attempting to guide myself by the principle that one's value is measured by the knowledge they share, as opposed to the knowledge they keep. The internet is the venue with the widest audience with whom to share. I hope that the creation of my "Christina's Creative Writing Cookbook" will be a major step in earning my residency in the cyber world.

A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

Beware the  AAAs! In his book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink warns that a revolutionary shift from left-brained to right-brained based society is upon us due to 3 factors: 

Abundance (we've OD'd on the material  and are attempting to medicate with the ethereal)

Asia (analytic, left-brained tasks are being outsourced) 

and 

Automation (robots are going to steal your job!) .

According to Pink we have moved on from the Industrial Age (where brute strength is the "backbone" of society) to the Information Age (where the brain is now the backbone of society) and are now into the "Conceptual Age" (where "inventive, empathetic, big picture capabilities" are the backbone of society). 

The Information Age obsessively rewarded Left-brained thinking and skills with high paying jobs. In the Conceptual Age these types of jobs are at risk of being either outsourced to Asia or automatized and taken over by technology. Pink argues that "a whole new mind" built on the interplay of both left and right-brained skills with an emphasis on previously dismissed "artsy fartsy" R-dominant skills is what it will take to get/keep/protect your job from Asia and robots. 

What made the existence of the Conceptual Age obvious and undeniable to me was Pink's illustration of how in today's society it is not enough for a product to be well-priced and highly functional, it must also be beautiful...enter that 'artsy fartsy' right brain;)

My First Re-Tweet!

Hooray for me! I got a RT!

Ok, I'll admit it...If you had asked me anytime before today what I thought of twitter, my reply would have been less than enthusiastic. That is, until I got my very first re-tweet (RT to those in the know;). 

I participated in my first edchat today at #ellchat. The topic was ways to differentiate for ELLs and since I've never been one to sit on the sidelines, I jumped right in with a tweet sharing a link to this awesome site.

I was immediately re-tweeted by another #ellchat member. I must admit I am much more enthusiastic about twitter now! Feels good to be loved...

Assignment 3- "Christina's Creative Writing Cookbook"

The Challenge: I want you to reflect on some possible ideas that you would like to pursue for the remainder of the course. Hopefully, you will find a topic driven by your passion. Write a blog post of at least 200 words reflecting on some possible topics and any questions you might have around the topic.

 My Response: I have done a bit of a 180 in my area of interest. Previously I had mentioned iPads in the classroom as a possible topic. In truth, my motivation for choosing this topic had more to do with the fact that it linked to current research I am doing for a merit scholarship research obligation than it did with following a true “passion”. While I am enthusiastic about any kind of technology in the classroom, I couldn’t honesty say that iPads in the classroom could be considered a “passion” of mine. What I was finding that this lack of intrinsic motivation was leading to some lagging on my part in compiling resources. And ok, I’ll admit it…I don’t even own an iPad!

 What I did find was that I was spending the majority of my free time (and I have precious little of it thanks to being a teacher, a student and mother of 2 children under the age of 2!) searching for information and resources that could help me build my Reading and Writing classes syllabi. This is my first semester teaching at the English Language Academy at the University of San Diego and it is a bit of a dream come true. I actually entered the MEd TESOL program in hopes of landing a job like this after graduation and now here I am doing what I’ve always wanted to do before I’ve even graduated. So my “aha!” moment was more of a “Duh!” moment, I realized I should be tapping into this passion for our assignment.

Of the 3 classes I am teaching this semester, I would say that the writing course is my baby. I came up with an idea of including a “Weekly Writing Warm-up” (www for short) which focuses on writing fluency over accuracy. So much of these academic ESL writing courses are focused entirely on teaching writing for academia and in my opinion, this is at the sacrifice of teaching the act of writing for the pure enjoyment of it. I told my students that one of my goals for the semester is for them to become comfortable with writing in English, which I would give myself a grade of a ‘C’ for accomplishing but if they love writing, then I’ll give myself an ‘A’. I also let them know that I’ve never received anything lower than an ‘A’ in my academic history so the pressure is on ;)

 So my new idea is to possibly build a new blog linking any awesome creative writing activities I find, as well as a log of The Weekly Writing Warm-ups I’m creating for others to use. I am really trying to live by the quote I mentioned in my 9/24/11 post, “In today’s world, your value comes not from the ideas you own but the ideas you share.” Starting a ‘Creative Writing for ESL students’ blog to share what I create and compile seems like it could be a step in the right direction. Maybe I’d call it “Christina’s Creative Writing Cookbook’…

My question is then, is this idea “techy” enough? Does it satisfy the requirement of the assignment?

Communities of Practice and PLNs

Communities of Practice Theory

I credit my former Multiple Literacies professor, Christine Kane, with flipping my perception of knowledge upside down saying something along the lines of “In today’s world, your value comes not from the ideas you own but the ideas you share.” I have been reminded of this throughout my process of discovery of PLNs and again while reading about Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s communities of practice. At the heart of both of these things is the value of shared learning and knowledge.

As Wenger defines them, communities of practice are “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” According to Wenger and Lave, communities of practice are not limited to professional work groups or the world of education. Instead and community of practice can develop anywhere interaction occurs, from the government, to the social sector, to the internet and beyond.

In this sense, the concept of what constitutes a “community of practice” could seem rather broad. One may wonder if they are indeed a member of a community of practice anywhere they interact. Do the people in front of and behind me in line at the grocery store constitute my community of practice at the end of the work day? We may share a passion for getting dinner on the table…but no. Alas, Wegner narrows the definition by requiring three characteristics: the domain (a shared, committed interest), the community (members engage in joint activities), and the practice (shared resources). Since my Vons co-patrons and I hardly exchange a cordial word or two, we do not constitute a community of practice. But my neighbors-with whom I pass recipes back and forth-may be a hidden community of practice that even I didn’t know I belonged to. But this too, is possible. As Wegner states, “Communities of practice are everywhere. They are a familiar experience, so familiar perhaps that it often escapes our attention.”

Critiques of Communities of Practice Theory

Communities of practice broaden our definition of where it is that learning takes place so widely that some may feel it threatens the foundation of organized learning—i.e. schools. Wegner himself says, “The class is not the primary learning event. It is life itself that is the main learning event.” Herein lays the root of much of the criticism of community of practice; it may appear as a rather romanticized concept that broadens the definition of “learning” to “living”, and in doing so undermines the importance of structured education and obliterating the role of the “master”. In a critique I read of communities of practice written by J. Atherton on http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/situated.htm, Atherton referred to communities of practice theory as a “clumsy” theory “worth almost as much as ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ in the jargon stakes.” Perhaps some of the “clumsiness” of the theory that Atherton refers to the difficulty delineating learning from practice within the theory.

Communities of Practice Theory and PLNs

A quote from Infed that I felt relates particularly to my current PLN experience is:

 “Initially people have to join communities and learn at the periphery. The things they are involved in, the tasks they do may be less key to the community than others. As they become more competent they become more involved in the main processes of the particular community. They move from legitimate peripheral participation to into 'full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991: 37). Learning is, thus, not seen as the acquisition of knowledge by individuals so much as a process of social participation” (emphasis added).

I think the role of teacher/master and student/learner is so ingrained in our society that many may balk at the notion of “peripheral participation” as a legitimate form of learning. PLNs allow for this peripheral participation as a phase of learning. This is where I sit now in my PLN community of practice, on the periphery learning but not participating quite yet.



Reference: Atherton J S (2011) Learning and Teaching; Situated learning [On-line: UK] retrieved 24 September 2011 from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/situated.htm

How to create a PLN: What I learned

How to create a PLN: What I learned

http://ateachr.blogspot.com/2010/07/build-pln-newbie.html

I like how this teacher-cum-blogger, a self-professed “technology newbie” broke down the process of building a PLN into literal bite-sized pieces. It went a bit like this: “Day 1-Breakfast-create a Gmail account. Lunch-create a twitter and Facebook account. Dinner-Start a blog on blogger…” Hmmm, this was starting to sound suspiciously familiar. Perhaps we were on the same diet?

http://albertaschoollibraries.pbworks.com/w/page/23813102/Using-Social-Media-to-Create-a-PLN

From this site I gleamed a pretty professional sounding definition of a PLN quoted from a man named David Warlick: "(A PLN) involves an individual’s topic oriented goal, a set of practices or techniques aimed at attracting or organizing a variety of relevant content sources, selected for their value, to help the owner accomplish a professional goal or personal interest."

I loved the quick, 9-slide slideshare on “How to build a PLN” which delivered an awesome new word into my lexicon: “twitterverse”. As in, I can’t believe that before last week I didn’t even exist in the twitterverse. Nor did I know that there is a whole twitterverse of free shared knowledge up for grabs on twitter!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ekj_Ys4FM

With my interest in twitter spurred by the newest addition to my vocabulary mentioned above, I decided to check this YouTube video titled: “PRESTO: How to Build Your PLN on Twitter”. This 3 minute video was absolutely awesome for instantaneously catapulting me from a twitter “newbie” to a “reporter” and helped me envision my embarking to the next step, “SME” in which one graduates from tweeting events and leaving comments to tweeting ideas and answering questions.

All in all, the similar thread I saw running through the myriad of PLN how-to pages I perused were the following key components:

-Start with a gmail account (and make sure you choose a good, professional user ID)

-Open professional twitter and Facebook accounts

-Start a blog

-Follow inspirational educators

-Get involved in the global conversation and become an inspiration yourself!

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