Metaphors for emergent learning

Re: Metaphors - light - for emergent learning

by Roy Williams -
Number of replies: 2

Excellent!  Just the right kind of 'light-touch' scaffolding. Thank you so much for pointing the train of thought in this direction.

Let me see if I can take it further ... 

Bringing their own associations and experience in, to add richness to the images is a very sound workshop technique. It might take longer, but it would be so much more grounded in their own sense-making, rather than asking them to 'detour' through the obscurity of pedagogical theory (which very few people have a taste for - even academics, lets be honest ...) and trying to use such abstract terms for their own sense-making. 

In other words it might answer your and Nick's challenge to make the 'ivory tower thinking' more accessible -  not by editing and reconfiguring it, but by destroying it, and getting the learners to build their own versions of the mapping sheet instead, just from the images. Wonderful idea!

So ...

If we go back to your design principle of always making a range of degrees of freedom available (and perhaps add a range of modes too), we could offer mapping sheets based on: 

  • Scoring (we started with a scale of 1-30 (and up to 40 for factors that fell off the edge of chaos).  We later decided to move on, beyond 'scores', to emphasise the push and pull of the factors (as dynamic vectors, rather than discrete scores), but why not keep them available for people who want to use them?
  • Mapping sheets:
    1. Our current 3.0 version, with graphics and text
    2. A new version, 4.0, with just graphics - but with collaborative exercises to generate associations and texts and more images (maybe a range of images for Risk, for example, from low to high risk, or comfortable to uncomfortable risk?) We could do this with graphics selected from the web, or created in collages, etc. 
    3. A version 4.1, with graphics and factor titles only (perhaps a bit simplified, if possible) 

That could be crazy and unmanageable, but it might allow precisely the range of degrees of freedom, and the range of light to heavy scaffolding which could provide an inviting entry point for just about everyone.  It might increase the workshop team though, to support all these options.  Mmmmm. 

This might wreak havoc with comparisons between footprints, but perhaps not - if the factor points are kept in the same places, and if there is a reasonalbe commonality of meaning across various people's and various groups' self-generated factors, the footprint 'gestalt', comparisons between footprints, and collaborative conversations about them would still work. 

And of course one of the underlying principles, namely that the footprints are visualisation tools for the learners (and designers and teachers) to explore their OWN experience of the learning, would be fully aligned with the practice of asking them to flesh out, and enrich their OWN sense-making of the factors. 

Any thoughts? 

 

 

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Metaphors - light - for emergent learning

by Maria Droujkova -

Yes, people need to bring - or to make - their own content. As you explain, the main challenge in such designs is to integrate everybody's experiences into a coherent whole. We want to avoid the feeling of Babel - everybody speaking a different language! 

How can some common analysis of big WHYs happen? How can I look at your footprint and you look at mine in ways that we can see similar big SO WHATs? Your footprint looks like a butterfly and mine has a big protuberance in the southwest - so what does it mean for the compatibility of our dreams and beliefs?

Most citizen science has citizens collect data, which is then analyzed back at the ivory tower. How can citizen scientists analyze data, too? Say, how can parents in my math clubs compare notes on how they help their five-year-olds with scavenger hunts for nonlinear functions? One parent helps by providing examples, another by asking questions, another by dispersing hugs. Different footprints; how can people analyze results together?

In reply to Maria Droujkova

Re: Metaphors - light - for emergent learning

by Roy Williams -

How can citizen scientists analyse data (or should we say create data) too?  mmmm...Your examples of comparing notes (on asking questions, providing examples, and dispersing hugs) is a great start. Let me try and think it through a bit further ...

So ... if we can provide the tools (graphics, free association exercises - what words, what texts, what images, what sounds, what smells do you associate with this graphic, when you think about what happened when you were learning? -

...  or vice versa: we could ask: What graphic would you associate with "risk", and the way it affected you and your learning? - and if we could provide  an app for them to replace the label 'risk' with a thumbnail of their own graphic for risk, which they could double click to expand (and reduce) it, so that they could show it to others in a discussion, and tell the story of how and why they chose it, and what 'risk' means to them) 

plus:  ... we could provide different degrees of freedom for low, medium or  high "risk': i.e. i) select from a given, small, set of images, or ii) find their own images, or iii) make their own images - in collages, in new graphics, etc. 

and if ... participants (learners, designers, teachers) created footprints on that basis - 

Then we could invite them to join in a conversation in which they could all compare notes: gestalts and icons and stories about how they arrived at their particular footprints.  

They could do this on paper.  It would be more fun and more interesting it they had ipads, or laptops, or mobile phones (?) or interactive tabletops, sure, but what a conversation it could turn out to be! 

And ... we could add an app that allowed participants to i) superimpose, aggregate, etc, their footprints with other footprints or ii) play-back a series of footprints created at different stages of a learning event, to show the underlying narrative dynamics? 

and so on ...