Elizabeth Wallace

Welcome to this forum about Lurking. The topic of my roundtable discussion on Friday, June 16 at the STLHE Conference is "Lurking Around Knowledges". (For those of you who are good spellers, I'd like to point out that I always try to use Knowledges in the plural!)

I'm beginning the session by asking participants to play a little word association game: What synonyms come to mind when the word "lurking" is used? In any conversation I like to start with sharing experiences, so that we can become our own experts before moving on to hear what other experts have to say.

So if you're logging on to this forum, I invite you to post some of the words that you associate with lurking. No editing, please, just your first thoughts!

What a joyful keynote address we heard this morning, as Jane opened up the Symposium. The smiles, the laughter, the animated dialogue...all evidence that the audience was engaging enthusiastically with the ideas presented.

At several points, Jane asked us to talk with each other about the 7 design steps (considering Who, Why, When, Where, What and What For) and exchange ideas about the 12 principlesand practices of dialogue education(needs assessment, safety, sound relationships, sequence/reinforcement, ideas/feeling/actions, immediacy, clear roles, teamwork, praxis, respect, engagement, accountability).

What was the highlight of the session for you? What new learning occurred? Did you make any "quantum leaps" ?  We invite you to continue the dialogue here.

I am chairing a working group that is developing some guidelines for classroom observation. We are gathering input from others who have experienced success. Please tell us how the observations were structured, and what approaches were used. Suggestions very welcome!

I still consider myself a newcomer to British Columbia, and an even newer member of the UCIPD network. As I understand it, the UCIPD members have been a loosely knit community for quite a while and many are looking for a way to create closer ties.

At SFU, our Learning and Instructional Development Centre (LIDC) is undergoing quite a few changes, and we would value input from other centres like ours. Rather than exchanging emails, we'd like to see all the discussion housed in one place, with resources and links all easily accessible.

I'd like to suggest that the UCIPD members consider using SCoPE as their "home" for a month or so, to see how useful and feasible it is. What do you think?

Like Karen Ragoonaden in another workshop, Phil gave us a glimpse into the Knowledge Forum online platform that is being used in the Faculty of Education at UBC. Phil is using the software with his graduate students to foster discourse.  It allows students to post comments and receive responses from co-learners.

One of the questions that came up was the issue of debating sensitive issues in a public forum. That led to the question of whether an online forum built for a class is really public debate. What are the questions about confidentiality that we should be asking when we ask members of a community to "speak their minds" online?