Re: [unrev-II] National Constellation of Communities of Practice in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

From: Henry van Eyken (vaneyken@sympatico.ca)
Date: Sun Aug 05 2001 - 14:47:01 PDT

  • Next message: Jack Park: "[unrev-II] Java Observation Simulation Inspection Toolkit"

    Scanned "National Constellation of Communities of Practice in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." This kind of stuff really emotes me.
    The last I saw by way of teaching improvement was the practice of teacher evaluation which scared college teachers in lowering standards (and
    gave undue powers to administrators). Enough said about that.

    Fascinating reading also "Rural Connected Communities: A Project in Online Collaborative Journalism" ( http://kn.cilt.org/cscl99/A04/A04.HTM )
    and glad to see Seymour Papert still active, practicing his extension of constructivism called constructionism (as in Logo programming and
    "computer-aided" Lego), basically learning by doing, but doing that what is especially good for learning. Incidentally, the paper revolves about
    MIT's Pluto, a software for co-operative authoring (sounds familiar?) "While computational construction kits have the potential to enhance
    learning, Papert stresses that it is important not to fall into the technocentric fallacy , the assumption that technology by itself can produce
    changes." [Please reread that last sentence a couple of times.]

    "Pluto is an online publishing environment designed for users without extensive computer experience. It supports collaborative authoring,
    editing, and publishing of
    material on the web, as well as the creation of personal web pages.... Pluto has been used by a number of communities including senior citizens
    in the US." Etc.

    Clearly, this subject falls very much within the editorial bailiwick of "Engelbart in Context."

    Going back to the paper "National Constellation of, etc." it is painful to observe how far the language used is removed from the language of
    such popular magazines as Newsweek and Time and one wonders just how much this retards progress. Consider, for example, a schoolboard or the
    board of a community college. Many members of such boards, if not all of them, depend on plain language for them to become effective in
    reforming education. Do we ever have our job cut out for us!!

    Henry

    Jack Park wrote:

    > Now, things are getting really interesting, and I am constantly amazed at the magnitude of that which I have not yet found on the web.... All
    > of the papers in the conference he mentions can be found at http://sll-6.stanford.edu/CSCL99/paperindex.html, and the paper that lent
    > the subject line can be found at http://kn.cilt.org/cscl99/A09/A09.HTM etc., etc.

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