Lana Rings

Since my comment to Matt’s post of March 15, as well as his comment regarding Moodle, is awaiting moderation, I’ll just go ahead and make it a post:

Wow. If Moodle can facilitate all that interaction, then that really connects to what Gardner Campbell was saying in his podcast (see below). I remember years ago when my California friend Peter Bach, who already had a doctorate in Ed, and was getting a second one in German, was talking about having students involved in their own grading… But back to this idea — I think that Matt and Gardner are sending out similar ideas….

Here’s what I wrote to the Modern Languages and the Active Learning Committee listservs:

W. Gardner Campbell from Baylor (Gardner’s research interests: English Literature, Science Fiction, Technology, Literature and Music, Renaissance Literature, Technology, Critical Theory, …) is Director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University, where he also serves as Assoc. Prof. of Literature, Media, and Learning in the Honors College. His ideas are highly thought-provoking. I’m quoting here from his podcast. (He was at one point at Mary Washington, where Jim Groom, who visited UTA recently, is Technology Specialist.)

These comments below are from my notes made upon hearing the podcast:

A one-kind fits-all curriculum is likely to take children away from the objects that compel them. A one-kind fits all mode of assessment is going to ensure that we miss the richest opportunities for bonding for the deepest kind of learning.

Web 2.0, learning, and assessment: thoughts by Gardner. If any of this intrigues you, here is the audio:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/podcast/assessment.mp3
and here is the blog post:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=1231

1. User-generated content makes the web richly interactive and helps us co-create the web. … Interesting comment: Wikipedia, a “thing that will never work in theory; it will only work in practice.” Look at it carefully. Look at the way the community presents itself. Look at the discussion page. Look at the user page where the people who have contributed to the discussion have accumulated a lot of interaction on their own. … Think what that would be like if we had pages for our best teachers, … testimonials. Appreciative inquiry in a collection of rich layered narratives of outstanding teaching? … How inspiring would it be to read that stuff, to find out over many decades how these teachers have made a difference in students’ lives. … A startling demonstration to the world of the magic that happens.
2. Idea of network effects: can scale at the point of the reader, at the point of the student. The more you have in the mix, the richer the experiences. … Lifelong learning online environment.
3. The idea of the long tale. Much value emerges slowly over time.
4. Perpetual beta, … meaning subject to improvement at any time. Not a contract, but a starting place. Idea of syllabus as contract anathema to the idea of a learning experience. … Students come up with their own learning objectives; that’s their assignment at the beginning of the semester. (a la Barbara Sawhill!) Frightening, because it means that “all the targets are moving. Of course they are. Anybody ever been in a relationship before? The relationship changes the people in the relationship. Oh, dear. What if you adjust to your spouse, and your spouse adjusts to you, and now you have to adjust to the adjustment? You work at it.