Welcome to our April seminar!

Re: creating community with students

by Nicholas Bowskill -
Number of replies: 5
Hi Bron,
For me the key point is to collaboratively create a representation of the diversity. That becomes a resource and a vehicle for individual thinking and discussion in the group.

One of the hardest things to do practically is to obtain a view of collective thinking in a community. Without such a view we develop our selves against what we imagine is the right way or we depend on others to tell us the *general* way of doing things or the *general* community view.

For me Universal Design seems like a set of principles to adopt rather than a guarantee of support for difference. It seems to me that it lumps all those with a physical disability together and says this is how we will support your difference. It ignores the differences amongst those within physical disability.

With Shared Thinking (and work elsewhere on Mathematics and networked classrooms with Walter Stroup and others) the goal is to generate a view of diversity by supporting the individual voice and synthesising it to display the community experience/view/context at a given moment in time. Diversity does not become a non-issue. Instead, it becomes the rationale, the engine, the driver or the motivation for further dialogue and development. It is actually THE issue.


I take your broad point Bron. I'm just diversifying it slightly. ;)


cheers,
Nick
In reply to Nicholas Bowskill

Re: creating community with students

by Asif Devji -
Hi Nick,

A question (which I'm sure you've heard before but which I think is playing itself out in complex ways socially): If all individual voices are heard, and if there are contradictions among those voices, what's to stop it becoming a cacophony in which nothing is agreed on?

I really like the notion of Universal Design that all of you are fleshing out here -- I feel it intuitively but the concept - as a concept - as you are presenting it here is new to me (as is a lot of the theory in the videos themselves)...and I love it!

I'd like to second the motion that you run an experiential webinar on this -- please sign me up as a participant.

Thanks,
Asif
In reply to Asif Devji

Re: creating community with students

by Nicholas Bowskill -
Hi Asif,
Good question. In fact there is no goal to achieve agreement unless we might think about agreement on the overall landscape of the community and agreement of the extent to which the representation of diversity is indeed representative.

The greater the diversity the richer the end-product which aims to show multiple perspectives on the issue as seen by the community/class (group-situated).

As the process goes along individuals talk, listen and see different ideas that support their own thinking. At the end each individual can vote on the ideas they have generated (student-generated questions) to produce this portrait of diversity in context. Then we have a measure of collective thinking and a firm basis for further development.

I should just add that this is a face to face activity using networked classroom technology. The electronic product can be shared and discussed online but generating it online is more problematic.


Best wishes,
Nick








In reply to Asif Devji

shared thinking

by Sylvia Currie -
Nick, thanks so much for offering your approach to leveraging this diversity And sign me up for a webinar as well! In fact, would you like to schedule a webinar next week as part of this seminar? We could also schedule a seminar / webinar more focused on your work. I've been peeking in on your Shared Thinking research over the past few months. Fascinating!
In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: shared thinking

by Nicholas Bowskill -
Hi Sylvia,
How are you today? I hope you're well and thank you for a very kind offer and kind words about my research. It's always nice to hear what people think and how it comes across to other people.

I'd love to do a webinar or even 2. My only problem is next week when I'm doing a tour of Scotland for a couple of presentations. I'm away from Monday until Thursday night. So if it wasn't too late I could manage Friday afternoon/evening GMT next week?

It'd be a wonderful opportunity to do a webinar on Shared Thinking sometime too. Thanks for that. Scheduling is tricky again. I'm away in Denmark 1st week in May then in Malaysia in 3rd week of May. So it would have to be last week of May or June is clear just now. Are they any good for you?

Whatever the outcome, thank you for the invitation and interest. I am grateful to you.

One other point that comes out of this. It occurs to me that time zones are an inter-cultural issue in online learning aren't they? :)


cheers,
Nick
In reply to Nicholas Bowskill

Re: shared thinking

by Sylvia Currie -
Nick, I'll get in touch with you about scheduling a Shared Thinking event. Let's plan to do that when you're not working around such a busy travel schedule. I've been thinking about you this past week and hoping you're not sitting in airports waiting for the ash to settle!