[Xmca-l] Re: Love in the time of corona
mike cole
mcole@ucsd.edu
Wed Apr 15 10:15:28 PDT 2020
Hi Wendy, Rob et al
I am really glad to hear from people who have used zoom productively in
their teaching.
I have found all of Wendy's suggestions to be effective and would add two
other suggestions.
(NB - I am talking about college classes, not second grade and
probably not until middle school
until more power is added to the platforms. )
1. Mix synchronous and synchronous. When you post materials to be read
before a class, the
annotation (commednt/question) function on zoom is a treasure trove of
information about what students
are interested in, confused about, reason with.
2, The chat function on zoom is like a twitter feed that can be
productively used during a session and after,
It creates a "whole class" feeling and can be used to guide the
teaching/learning process in productive ways.
mike
3,
On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 5:01 AM Wendy Maples <wendy.maples@outlook.com>
wrote:
> As someone who worked in distance ed for over 20 years, the last 10 of
> that in varying online environments, I can endorse what Rob (who I worked
> with for over 10 of those years) says below.
>
> Though he doesn't use the term, much of what Rob describes is
> project-based learning. It is remarkable what students can do 'together'
> online, whether synchronously or asynchronously. I am not sure who was keen
> to make the distinction (and the distinction is important), however, both
> sync and async are valuable modes for teaching and learning (and some
> intermingling of the two might possibly be best).
>
> Three things that I would add to Rob's description of good online learning
> processes are:
>
> 1. The importance of having a 'get to know you' session -- which I
> would argue, for synchronous learning environments, is essential. I have
> experienced the value of this in both educational and business settings.
> The 'get-to-know-you' should be clearly flagged as a chance to say hello in
> a zero-risk setting. It should be short and involve an easy introduction,
> 'If you can hear me, click on the hand-raise/yes/thumbs up button; if you
> have used Zoom before, click on...; if you like cheese.... Then proceed to
> a game, such as put a pin on a map, showing where they are; or share a
> photo of a pet or houseplant; bring a 'tool' to your learning - an image,
> a description, a motivational quote, etc. Then offer a chance to talk with
> another student about hopes, motivations, etc. Which bring me to:
> 2. Use break-out rooms (or small group set threads) so that very small
> numbers of students (2-3) need to speak with each other on a particular
> task. In the 'get-to-know-you', this might be as simple as 'What are your
> hopes for this course?' or 'Agree on one question you'd like to ask the
> tutor.' or 'What's a key concern/topic you hope the course will cover?',
> etc. The break-out group then returns to the main session and relays what
> they have come up with.
> 3. In synchronous sessions, don't be afraid of what may feel like long
> silences -- and don't be tempted to fill them! By all means check if your
> question or prompt was clear, but -- as in f2f sessions -- don't be tempted
> to answer yourself 🙂. Similarly, in asynchronous, if you are
> confident the prompt/question/task and deadline for engaging is clear,
> don't be tempted to jump in with a long string of your own postings. Offer
> encouragement, of course and -- if you become convinced you've asked the
> wrong Q or set the wrong task -- revise.
>
> I hope this is helpful!
> W
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of robsub@ariadne.org.uk <robsub@ariadne.org.uk>
> *Sent:* 14 April 2020 17:47
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>; Greg
> Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Love in the time of corona
>
> For what it's worth here are a few thoughts on creating online activities.
> I don't think there is a one size fits all answer because students (as well
> as teachers!) come from all sorts of different cultures with all sorts of
> different expectation about community. But I hope that some of my
> suggestions will work broadly - my hope is based on my background, which is
> in the competitive individualist west, where the biggest problem about
> learning communities is getting out of students' heads the idea that any
> kind of collaboration is tantamount to collusion and will be punished with
> the utmost severity. (I find I have had to work at getting that out of a
> lot of teachers' heads as well.) So basically, if it works on my students,
> there is a good chance that it will work elsewhere.
>
> I don't think you should work at community directly. it is something best
> sneaked up on in the course of other activity. But the other activity has
> to be carefully and artfully constructed. That's one of many reasons why
> you don't make an online course by chucking offine material on to the web.
>
> There are two aspects - being online and working together. Being online
> will be a challenge for many students. A lifetime of texting, Snapchatting,
> Tiktoking, and ordering your clothes, holidays and pizza over the internet
> does not prepare people for using an online learning environment. So you
> have to expect people to be clueless to start with. But you should act as
> if this is an entirely natural environment right from the start. You need
> to make it their assumption that they will be working together every week
> if not more often. You need to make it their assumption that if they're
> live online, they will see and hear each other. It's astonishing in some of
> the courses I've seen how many students have microphones that don't work :-)
>
> So design your teaching and your assessment work to perhaps enforce,
> certainly encourage, working together. The more they work together, the
> more a sense of community will grow. In my environment, students follow the
> marks, even the disengaged ones. if there are marks available for
> collaborative activities, they will do them. They will do them with less or
> more of a sense of engagement, but the hope is that as they get used to
> them, students will recognise the intrinsic rewards as well as the
> extrinsic ones.
>
> I don't know what your assessment strategy will be. The standard at the OU
> is a series of assignments roughly once a month over a nine month course.
> Each assignment should contain some kind of collaborative element. Even the
> simplest will do - quote two substantial and meaningful posts you have
> written in the online forum. There is plenty of room for interpretation of
> "substantial and meaningful" but you get the idea.
>
> Then you work up to them working in teams to produce, say, an annotated
> bibliography on a specific topic, or a powerpoint on something.And you can
> assess the way they work together in a forum to produce this. Sounds
> daunting - I've done it, works easier than you think.
>
> If you're working with them live, give them opportunities to work together
> on exercises or issues. Even if there are only two of them, put them in a
> breakout room together. Without you there, they have to talk to each other.
>
> Incorporate exercises like "how am I doing?" Get students to assess their
> own progress against the learning outcomes of the course, and discuss with
> each other. You could give them an exercise after working on it
> individually, to come to a combined ranking of the two or three bits of the
> course that they most need to revisit. (Which you obviously then revisit,
> and get the students who think they're Ok on it to teach the others.)
>
> I have so much more to say. I could write a book, as you can tell. I'd be
> very happy to give more detail, perhaps off-list.
>
> Final thought: people often compare ftf and online communities by
> different standards. Ftf communities all have weaknesses and failings but
> because they're familiar, we assume they're working. Because online
> communities are new and unfamiliar, we tend to see all their faults and
> weaknesses and judge them by standards that we don't apply to the ftf world.
>
> Rob
>
>
>
> On 13/04/2020 18:17, Greg Thompson wrote:
>
> Lois and others,
>
> Inspiring to see all that you and ESI are doing there in the midst of this
> whirlwind - and in the eye of the storm no less!
>
> This comment of yours seemed to resonate with Liz' and Annalie's comments
> about mental health:
> "people are realizing how they feel is not inside them".
>
> That seems to me to be a revolutionary thought.
>
> Also, I'd ask this to you but don't want to distract you from your
> important work, so perhaps others can talk about how activities can be
> transformed in these times to adapt to this new era (I'd like to call it a
> "moment" but it feels bigger than that).
>
> What got me thinking of this were the Zoom sessions that Lois mentioned on
> Creating Connection and Building Community. The fact is that there will be
> new possibilities to do these things (e.g., the possibility of truly GLOBAL
> communities and connections - perhaps to Andy's world-perezhivanie), but
> the activities that enable these things will also need to be transformed
> and different.
>
> [I'm a bit of an idiot about these things so I'm just realizing that
> online classes can't just be in-person activities that are taken online.
> They need online activities that can build connection and community among
> students. Still working on that.]
>
> So I'm wondering if anyone has had any success or even just suggestions
> regarding how to create online activities that can realize the
> possibilities and potential for connection and community in online spaces?
>
> [I'm thinking really practically/locally here in terms of what can be done
> in my classes to build connection and community in online spaces, but the
> answer will, of course, be relevant to forms of cross-national solidarity,
> granting that there may be other challenges as well - e.g., language].
>
> -greg
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 10:53 AM Lois Holzman <
> lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org> wrote:
>
> Hello All,
>
> Following the lead of others, I'll jump in. While NYC and state are in
> serious crisis and all its cultural and economic conflicts even more
> glaring, the vibrancy and energy has not disappeared. It's just different.
>
> As Vygotsky is purported to have said, "A revolution solves only those
> tasks raised by history..." History has thrown us a monster.
>
> Different too are the forces working to shape this extraordinary
> historical moment. Much of that shaping by those who are in positions of
> political and economic, etc. authority—and the pandemic itself—are creating
> fear and despair, both for now and the future. At the same time, the
> shaping being done by so many thousands of people and organizations that
> inspire and organize people to exercise their power and creativity for
> connectedness are generating hope and possibility.
> I feel that palpably all day long.
>
> We in the global development community are re-tooling and/or stepping up
> our virtual activities, many of which involve play, performance and
> ensemble building, not to take people's minds off what's happening, but to
> involve them in some "non-knowing growing" and participation in creating
> positive responses to what's happening that have the possibility to
> continue to be transformative of individuals and communities. A few
> examples—
> establishing a Global Play Brigade working across borders of
> nation state, culture and economy (so far performance activists from about
> 40 countries involved)
> offering Creating Connection and Building Community
> <https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmyemail.constantcontact.com%2FPlay-Sessions-via-Zoom-Opened-Up--Free-online-social-gatherings.html%3Fsoid%3D1101246158194%26aid%3DqweSrQdaUGo&data=02%7C01%7C%7C5663a6221e70481f073a08d7e094077f%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637224798691594694&sdata=7miiPkjAfjWnwiQs33uxHGc46ldMpsDPTgAP3o%2Bhghs%3D&reserved=0>free
> play sessions via Zoom, each one originating in a different part of the
> world (about 150 people per session so far)
> taking our Creating Our Mental Health conversation/workshop series
> national and international in a moment when people are realizing how they
> feel is not inside them, not merely socially produced and organized, but
> social in its potential transformativity
> taking All Stars Project programs for poor youth and their
> communities in NYC, NJ, Dallas, Chicago and the Bay Area virtual
>
> If you're interested in any of this and more, let me know. And you can
> always check out the social media listed in my signature.
>
> Stay safe,
> Lois
>
> --
> *Access my latest article—**Why be Half-Human? How Play, Performance and
> Practical Philosophy Make Us Whole **(written with Cathy Salit)—and read
> the rest of this marvelous book, Social Construction in Action
> <https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.taosinstitute.net%2Fproduct%2Fsocial-construction-in-action-contributions-from-the-taos-institutes-25th-anniversary-conference&data=02%7C01%7C%7C5663a6221e70481f073a08d7e094077f%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637224798691604702&sdata=VgAtxXE%2BFFBeR60rDXu194WELDaZ2YOn6UD%2BdE6SfJI%3D&reserved=0>,
> which you can download for free!*
>
>
> Lois Holzman
> Director, East Side Institute for Group & Short Term Psychotherapy
> Chair, Global Outreach, All Stars Project, UX
> Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Vygotskian Practice and Performance,
> Lloyd International Honors College at The University of North Carolina at
> Greensboro
> Address: East Side Institute, Attn:Lois Holzman
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>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> WEBSITE: https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson
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>
>
--
Being a social scientist is like being a geologist who studies rocks in a
landslide. Roy D'Andrade
---------------------------------------------------
For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other members
of LCHC, visit
lchc.ucsd.edu. For archival materials and a narrative history of the
research of LCHC, visit lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
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