Wide Open 2: Lake Erie and Collaboration in Blended Learning

Captured from https://weather.com/weather/today/l/44024:4:US

Twenty-four hours and 12 inches or more later (referencing previous post)
The lake remains wide open
And the snow has moved to the south and east
Exemplifying the potential of so many possibilities

And I continue to reflect on similar potential and possibilities for wide open collaboration in blended learning, stretching perhaps key concepts from Chapter 2 reading for BlendKit2017--

As an advocate of minimal guidance for learning and yet recognizing

"The conceptual network of an expert is more richly connected, nuanced, and diverse than that of a novice." Gardner, H. (2006). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. (quoted in the reading)

however, sensing they are not mutually exclusive. What is/can be the potential for learning if the "design and incorporation of environmental cues" lends itself to wide open collaboration and skillful, accomplished questioning by an expert learner throughout the collaborations? Questions that mediate thinking and enable more novice learners to make those connections and recognize those nuances?

Collaboration-- moving from interaction to wide open collaboration and meaningful conversations among learners and even more than conversation to co creation and co construction may open wide avenues for learning. Baker, Jensen and Kolb highlight the importance of the conversations:

"Conversation is at once the most ordinary and most profound of human activities. It is ubiquitous, ever present, and all around us.  In it many forms-- face to face, telephone, among written texts, or in cyberspace-- conversation is a process of interpreting and understanding human experience."  --Conversational Learning: An Experiential Approach to Knowledge Creation, Baker, Jensen and Kolb 2002

What if in those conversations, those interactions, an expert learner(s) injects skillful questions? In what ways does that engender deeper learning? The art of questioning that effectively mediates thinking and learning is a skill I strive to become more adept at and requires lots of practice and reflection. It's one that appears essential to me for both face to face and blended learning facilitation of conversations. Brett Creech in his post questions the possibilities of asynchronous discussions and this caught my attention:

"asynchronous conversations take place in the impersonal comfort of a graded discussion forum where it was required for students to post an original thought and two responses to fellow students.  Students are expected to keep the conversation civil and it’s written down as a rule of conversation, and to stay on topic.  This is not to say there can’t be strong debates in an asynchronous environment, but a lack of non-verbal communication may not make readers of another student’s post fully aware of that student’s passion for or against the topic of the day."

I guess I'm wondering and thinking that encouraging the development of a community of learners and their collaboration in addition to modeling leveraging the affordances of technology in conversations with images and/or video in conjunction with skillful questions and a light online voice might/can alleviate the flatness of a text environment.

In addition to those conversations, I'm wondering on also stretching the interactions noted in the reading more wide open, moving from interaction to collaboration and co constuction/co creation. Not explicitly mentioned in the reading as trust building-- opening activities to get to know each other, using a wiki to "state viewpoints" create that kind of trust needed to participate in co construction of knowledge and civil discourse. Minus relationships and trust, isn't that learning is restricted and restrained?

What if an initial activity might be the co creation of a online presentation that delineates initial understandings of a topic? Like this created by learners in the March 2016 Blended Learning course from Powerful Learning Practice?


Or in a collective wondering, participating together in developing learner questions on the topic under consideration. Using Todays Meet, Twitter with a hashtag, a chat service or a Google Doc, bringing learner questions back into face to face discussions. In this example, the questions from a collective wondering in The Connected Educator Month Book Club have been "chunked" by leaders and then everyone added their thoughts and ideas to the questions.

An additional example of co construction of knowledge is the following collaborative presentation from a unit on the study of building trust online. In addition to the ideas from learners in the course, the twitterverse was invited to add their thoughts too.




The co construction piece, in the open, seems pretty powerful to me as I've observed from the facilitator role learners co creating repository of resources around a topic, annotating resources together (much like in this MOOCs readings), creating study guides, and moving up Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach's connected learner scale to collective action.

Those co creations, that collective action, those conversations enable wide open possibilities for profound learning, in my humble opinion.

Which brings me back to the lake and wide open-- with a wide open lake this time of year, it is beautiful and there are uncertainties requiring the expertise of our weatherperson who is critical in guiding our actions and keeping us safe. It seems to me this is the same with learning. Designing and creating open wide learning, in this case blended learning in which collaboration (interaction) leads to incredible possibilities necessitates designers with expertise in creating just the right conditions and facilitation that can minimally guide learners to vast open landscapes of learning yet realized.

As always, thinking and reflecting on this to be continued----

Celebrating a unique collaborative inquiry

Some 2 years minus 4 months ago, I embarked on a unique collaborative inquiry.

The driving question:
How can I restore range of motion and functionality to my left shoulder?

Luckily I've had the opportunity to dig deeper and deeper with an expert learner, Dana Melena, with this content.

And as the expert learner, Dana has brought to our collaboration all the attributes of expertise that Bransford described:

• Expert learners have well-organized knowledge, not just problem-solving strategies.
• Expert knowledge is organized to support understanding, not just recall. And the organization is grounded in a field’s foundational concepts.
• Expert knowledge is conditionalized, and the conditional relationships form patterns that experts recognize and rely upon.
• An expert’s fluency allows the easy retrieval of relevant knowledge. The patterns mentioned in the previous point are second nature to the expert, while the novice struggles to recognize them. This fluency with fundamental patterns frees the mental energy to focus on new knowledge to add to the pattern.
• There is a difference between adaptive experts, whose metacognitive skills allow the transfer of knowledge from one setting to another, and routine experts, whose expertise allows them to function well in standard settings but doesn’t serve them well when conditions are different.

Dana is undeniably an "adaptive expert" as this inquiry has been challenging and this body of mine more than unique.

Throughout this twice weekly collaboration
We've asked questions--
We've listened, really listened to each other--
We've brought in expert opinions--
We've had difficult conversations--
She's valued what is important to me; she's been encouraging, she's been frank and honest.

And reflecting now-- the elements of collaborative inquiry abound.

Developing Collaborative Knowledge - Collaborative inquiry creates intersubjective understanding, including areas of common experience and mutual knowing. Knowledge is co-created by the group and is shared by the group.

Relationship - The potential for collaboration is enhanced by a shared history and careful attention to relationship building. It is characterized by an affirmation of one another's contributions, an absence of internal competition and the nurturing of individual and well as group development.

Dialogue - Dialogue is central to the process of  collaborative inquiry. This includes storytelling, creating metaphors and using other right brained processes, experience sharing and the expression of tentative, not fully-formed ideas.

Attentive Listening - Collaborative inquiry requires careful attention to self and others by listening with the intent to understand, observing nonverbal cues, attending to affective responses, honoring silence, and listening to the spaces between the silences.

Reflection -Engagement in collaborative inquiry requires multiple levels of reflection:individual reflection on process and experience, individual reflection on the written reflection of others, and group reflection through dialogue.

Openness to divergent views - By acknowledging that our own knowledge base may be limited by our socio-cultural background and experiences and becoming open to seeing from another's frame, opportunities to extend knowledge are created.

Shared Passion - When passion is mutual, the motivation for collaboration is high. Excitement and energy generated by one member often ignites passion in others.

Commitment - In order for effective collaboration to occur, members must be committed to themselves, to one another and to the group process and project.

We've created areas of common experience-- she has been the lead learner in this area with expansive expertise; I've brought some knowledge of my history and aspirations for doing.

The relationship element, as always, is huge. Each of us has intentionally engaged in affirmations growing a meaningful and productive relationship that enables visions to become reality.

Our sharing of experiences, the stories -- have contributed to formal and informal dialogues that have deepened and supported my learning.

And we have listened, really; so important to highlight that again-- Dana's a master of observational listening, hearing what's not said and that has been a strength for me also.

Our reflections on what worked, what didn't yielded more questions, more experimentation-- and led to different paths all in the quest of an answer to the driving question.

We've extended our collaborative knowledge -- when presented with a divergent view I was struck by Dana's nimbleness and flexibility and my excitement as she changed directions in mid step within seconds.

Fueled by our passions-- mine for regaining functionality and hers for seeing that occur-- we have sustained a huge momentum throughout this extensive inquiry. Dana's passion has truly "re ignited" mine when the inquiry came up against potholes and some detours.

And lastly commitment, articulated more clearly than I could ever-- we've been committed to ourselves, to one another and to the process.

Adding here one last element-- that of celebration and recognition of a process that is seen as important and significant by those involved. In my mind, these celebrations and affirmations can not only add value to the process but also provide opportunities for those involved to understand more deeply how profoundly the opportunity to inquire collaboratively has altered their lives.

Still inquiring and learning more, Dana, this celebration's for you! Thank you--

Image: 'The Art of Inquiry'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/60533367@N02/5524124901

Making their own connections

4th graders in PA
2nd graders in TX
5th graders in PA
Grade 1's in Saskatchewan
High schoolers in TX
2nd graders in PA

Learning  and collaborating together
Teaching each other

How did this come to be?

Their teachers, participants in the year 2 Powerful Learning Practice community (http://plpwiki.com/Year+2+%28PBL%29), team together on the Whole Teacher/Child team (http://plpwiki.com/The+Whole+Teacher+Child) to design a PBL unit in which students inquired:

"How can making global connections help me learn and grow in different ways?"

In this learning experience, students connected and created videos of introduction and learning, and a story together.

Powerful learning across time zones--
Making their own connections--

One of their introductions




A collaborative story created by grade 1s and 4th graders can be viewed here: http://wholeteacherchild.blogspot.com/p/artifacts.html

To their teachers, a standing ovation for your collaboration, for helping your students connect and learn--

When teachers provide theses kinds of opportunities for young people to engage in these kinds of collaboration, possibilities abound--

My letter--

Today, on the Answer Sheet at the Washington Post, Anthony Cody was a guest blogger. As he makes his compelling case for teachers to raise their voices, he referenced and linked to letters written by members of Teachers Letters to Obama that call for change in current educational policy trends. Mine is there, one of many; I'm pasting the letter here also. As the conversations and the rhetoric gears up, remember our children.

---

Dear Mr. President, Secretary Duncan and members of Congress,

As a National Board certified teacher, a former classroom teacher of over 35 years, and a current teacher leader in a number of online communities of practice, I strongly encourage you to seriously consider an alternative direction as you address the issue of improving teacher practice to support student learning. The current trend of using test scores to evaluate teacher practice and improve instruction, in my opinion, is divisive, counterproductive, competitive and unsubstantiated by research.

There are many and varied studies indicating that teachers --who collaborate around their practice, who share a deep commitment to understanding learning and improving practice in communities, who develop collegial relationships and dispositions, who engage in difficult and meaningful conversations around learning, who take risks in implementing new strategies to improve learning, who continuously reflect on those changes and as a community develop a sense of collective efficacy-- will develop a knowledge of practice that leads to systemic change and better learning for all students.

In Finland, for example, teachers are provided weekly time to collaborate around questions of learning, they collaboratively develop curriculum from a lean set of national standards that meets the needs of their students. They work collectively to improve teaching practice and the country has seen positive systemic changes in instruction and learning for students.

I have had the privilege to participate as a leader and co learner in a number of online communities of practice and witness firsthand the power of teacher collaboration in improving learning. I urge you to open conversations with teachers and researchers around this topic and to support and implement policies for teacher collaboration that can lead to transformation in instruction and greater learning for all students.

For our children,
Lani Ritter Hall