Browsing articles tagged with " amazing"

The Ripe Environment: Interdependent vs. Independent Questioners

Jun 26, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments
The Ripe Environment: Independent Questioners [ 10:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (326)

For as long back as I can remember we have squashed the questions that only help out the individual and focusing only upon the questions that benefit the most students. The tangential question is not allowed because it is a distraction to the learning, rather than an enhancement. The student who thinks divergently is allowed to do so only if she doesn’t speak. An environment such as this is not ripe for learning. In fact, I would make the case that it is rotten.

The students that are dependent upon one another to guide their learning may learn in an environment where only one voice is heard at a time. But it takes so much longer to get to true point of significance because each of the learners can only move as fast as the question or the answer. The backchannel allows many students to ask questions, but the learning doesn’t happen until those questions are answered. Backchannels inherently are also not very searchable or friendly to going back through and pulling out the most important elements. Rather, they are representations of the thinking going on in the background of a session or class period.

Rather, the Interdependent students need a place for an organic question and answer that they can all edit and work within. They need a collaborative document or wiki that is a constantly reworked FAQ for the content. Each student is able to learn from one another and save that learning. They are dependent upon one another for their learning, and that is the way that they wanted to be.

However, it is something so much more amazing to allow the independent questioner to come into the mainstream of the classroom or session. The Ripe Environment allows for this type of learner to engage in the experience without feeling like an outsider.

Traditionally, independent questions are a challenge to authority… and they should be. They should challenge what is truly the most important content being presented. But, rather than having students distracting everyone with a question, they will be creating learning for everyone by proposing a solution. The independent questioners most times do not really want an answer from the presenter, teacher, or workshop facilitator. They would much rather answer the questions themselves; they just need the okay to go and research it themselves and the opportunity to present what they find.

So, my proposal is this: Let learners get engaged by a divergent question. Let them find out what they can on the answer. Let them have time at the end (or middle, or beginning) of a session to present their findings. Let them be authentic. Let them create something new.

Maybe this isn’t revolutionary. Maybe this is simply building and letting the learners come. Regardless, we aren’t doing it enough, and for that I am regretful.

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The Ripe Environment: The Markers

Jun 26, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

The “I know it when I see it” form of collaboration is no longer valid.

We need new ways to tell if learning is happening through group contribution. We need to be able to assess collaboration, but we can’t do it the same way that we assess writing or proficiency. Those skills are much easier to boil down to a continuum or rubric. Others have tried, and we have been for the most part satisfied with their traditional, enigmatic, and mostly non-educational continuums for collaboration.

These forms, however, are not worthy of our cause. They provide us with a way to see things in an abstract sense, showing a fictional path to collaboration that is just as hopeless as using the term as a buzzword to show that change is occurring.

Instead, I would like to outline the types of collaboration that occur in The Ripe Environment. These are the markers that we should be striving for and looking for:

  1. Learning objects to be used by multiple learners, created by multiple learners. (This does not include one person writing or creating and the others supplying their input. True collaboration means that everyone has their fingerprints on the potting wheel.)
  2. Collaborative asynchronous lists. (Never underestimate the power of listing. And yet, the power is not in the listing. It is in the reordering, reorganizing, and reconstituting a list. Think of wiki collaboration here.)
  3. A followable thread of discussion (This can be through linking, commenting, or something like voicethread)
  4. Shared Space with over 10 revisions (Any object or space that has been edited or revised more than ten times by multiple authors can be considered a respectable work of collaboration).
  5. A mash-up or remix of anything (This type of collaboration marker is the halmark of true collaboration. The best examples are when the masher doesn’t know the mashee. That is when the unintended (but most amazing) concequences of sharing and collaboration kick in.)

Obviously this is not an exhaustive list. What are the other markers of collaboration in The Ripe Environment?

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Learning Language

May 2, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

I don’t usually post personal things on this blog, but I thought that this was just too important to leave unpublished.

My daughter is learning language at an amazing rate. She knows more words at 18 months than I thought was possible, but they aren’t just any words. They are words that are important for her. They are words that have a meaning and a context for her life.

Normally I would turn this experience into an educational rant about creating authentic places for our students to learn language and curriculum, but for now I will just leave you with this video.

(Either JavaScript is not active or you are using an old version of Adobe Flash Player. Please install the newest Flash Player.)

iloveyou

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Learning 2.0: The Colorado Conversation (The Reminder)

Feb 21, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments


My anticipation is rising. The time is drawing near when Learning 2.0 will be here. I will not attempt to recreate Karl’s amazingly concise post (if you have read my blog for any length of time, you will know that brevity is not always my first priority).

The purpose of this post is just to keep the awareness at an all time high that things are happening in Colorado. We aren’t trying to be the EdTech mecca, just to have a unified (whatever that means) voice for change. Let’s see what happens.

“Just a reminder for those of you attending – either physically or virtually – that Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is coming up this Saturday, February 23rd, from 9:00 am – 2:30 pm MST. If you registered, you should’ve received this email a few days ago with some updated information. And here’s the schedule for the day’s activities.

For those of you interested in attending virtually, we will be attempting to Ustream the seven sessions – channel info here.
Please keep in mind that our first priority is pulling off the physical
conference, so if the Ustream happens it will be a bonus, but we’re
going to give it a shot.

We have about 170 folks registered,
although I imagine a few will change their minds at the last minute.
The weather looks like it’s going to cooperate, everything is planned
out and we think (emphasis on think) we’ve thought of everything. It’s going to be interesting . . .”

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Live Blogging With AHS students.

Jan 28, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  13 Comments

On
Friday, I had the distinct pleasure of listening to some of the most
unique voices in the discussion over Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind.
These voices did not come from an “expert” being paid thousands of
dollars for a breakfast engagement. They did not come from a literary
analyst who picked apart Pink’s prose with perfect clarity and wit.
They came from Arapahoe high school students that were eager to create a conversation, expansive and intense. Check out the discourse for yourselves.

We
took a look at one of Pink’s chapters specifically: Story. I especially
liked how the conversation evolved over the course of the hour that we
blogged. It seemed to start from a place of pure story, then it evolved
into something about the future of the workplace. Then we got very
theoretical. We started talking about how story can influence memory
and how memory influences story. Even though Pink devotes quite a bit
of time to this idea, I really like the way the students were able to
incorporate it into their thinking. It really got me to start
reflecting on what the purpose of crafting learning environments can
be.

If we create an environment that is ripe enough to learn
within then we are creating an experience; we are crafting the story of
that learning. In turn that learning becomes a memory, one that will be
told over and over as a story if it is good enough. So, in truth, we
are trying to create learning memories for students, ones that they
will hold onto long after they have forgotten the names of their
classmates or what day of the week it was on. We want to create
memories that are so lasting that the events take on mythical
proportions, they start living on as stories of their own.

Is
there a way of analyzing the ways in which we tell stories about our
high school experience to our friends from that time period? Is there a
way to know whether or not those experiences were learning based or
extraneous (not that they were bad things, mind you)? My question to
those students, and to anyone who reads this blog is what is a learning
memory that you have? What is the one experience in an authentic
learning environment that you will never be able to forget?

(Special thanks to Karl Fisch for setting up this amazing opportunity. More of this kind of collaboration and conversation is needed desperately.)

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The Great Remix Debate

Dec 18, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments
The Great Remix Debate Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (142)

March 28, 2007 04:56AM

 

I give all of the credit for this podcast to my amazing students. They were the ones that kept a debate on intellectual property, remixing, and mash-ups going for nearly thirty minutes. They were the ones that came up with the amazing examples to support their points. They were also the ones to inspire many thoughts on creating rules for how we use content in the classroom. I am now convinced that each classroom of students should decide for themselves just what they want to be done with their content. Should teachers be able to use it for next year’s class? Should teachers remix their content into more polished work? We need to be asking the students to come up with what their own boundaries for intellectual property are, and we need to be teaching them where the boundaries are drawn already. I have decided to split this podcast up into about 40 chapters because that is how many different ideas were thrown around (mostly by different students). I have attached each student’s blog to the chapters in which they spoke. The one request I have is that you comment on this post and tell us which side won the debate. (Although, I’m sure my students wouldn’t mind if you commented on some of their blog posts either.)

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The company I keep now…

Nov 29, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Personal  //  No Comments

I’m not sure how many people truly mean it when they say it, but I am truly honored by my inclusion in the Most Influential Blog Post category of the 2007 Edublog Awards for The Ripe Environment.

To be along side Karl Fisch and his amazing work to create a mirror for our schools…

To be next to Konrad Glogowski and his visual portrayal of pedagogy…

To be nestled in with Scott Mcleod and his viral networking power and ability to see the greatness in a single idea…

To be among Kris Bradburn and the challenges put out by Wandering Ink…

That is what I am most honored by.

Thanks to all who nominated me. If you care to, please vote for this blog. I don’t imagine I have written as influential of blog posts as the above bloggers, but I would like it not to be an absolute slaughter in the polls.

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links for 2007-11-27

Nov 27, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Delicious Links  //  No Comments
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A New Possibliity

Oct 27, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

itunes pic
This new possibility (which is now kind of old) is a total reversal of some of the things that I have consistently talked about and advocated for. This only comes about because of a great contact I have made with the principal of our online school (eDCSD). The possibility is this: Starting from a place of amazing technology and bringing in education rather than starting from a traditional school and trying to shove technology into it. What do you think about it

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I vs. We

Aug 1, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

itunes pic

I don’t know when it happened, but I have started using the word “we” in my podcast and blog when I would normally use the word “I.” I believe that it is due to my increased awareness and involvement of the community that I have surrounded myself with. I also think that many more of “us” should start using “we” when “we” write and speak. It makes me feel like I am a part of something, that “we” are going in a particular direction. I want “us” to be aware of how amazing “our” community can become, so long as we don’t fall into some of the pitfalls that I describe in the podcast. Let me know what you think of this idea at benwilkoff@gmail.com.
The image for this podcast is by http://flickr.com/photos/factoids/. I think it is amazing.

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