Gordon and all,
I just saw the video with the audio for the first time. What happened to the
message from Ana describing it & Gordon's response to her? I can't find
those messages -- not on xmca website or in my folder (they were too good
for me to have dreamed them). Ana beautifully rendered the point at which
"Yeah!" the object was created -- the glance upwards, the aha! moment, and
then agreement, and jointly moving forward....
I don't remember the names of the girls, I don't have Gordon's paper with
me, and the link to it seems to be inoperable now, so in my following
comments, I will refer to the girl on the left, who seems she could be
working on her own at first -- first to take initiative, as "LEFTY" and the
one on the right (who is addressed by LEFTY as "Lindsy") as "Lindsy"
When I viewed the tape without audio, I saw LEFTY as the sort of student who
makes teaching sooo much fun, because she "gets it," takes initiative,
brings others in.... around whom curricular activities work in ANY classroom
(so what's the big deal?)
When I viewed the tape with audio, I noticed the lead-up to the aha! moment
-- which disperses the "aha!" throughout the video segment. Perhaps
throughout the classroom community (?). Both girls are oriented to working
together from the outset: they *lean into each other*, even as LEFTY
proceeds to write in her journal without consulting Lindsy, and Lindsy is
motivated to ask, "What are YOU planning on making?" (thereby distinguishing
LEFTY's position from her own w/ 2nd person address).
Then LEFTY explains she is writing in her journal that "WE haven't decided
yet [what to make]" -- offering 1st person plural position for Lindsy to
take up. Also, LEFTY does NOT offer ideas without turning to Lindsy
("LINDSY! This is neat...")
Lindsy, for her part, turns to LEFTY for signs of "joint-ness," to make
co-ordination explicit, but she also makes suggestions ("Let's look through
[the book] some more..."), specifically pointing out the sailboat-on-wheels,
which LEFTY is able to visualize as a do-able project. It's LEFTY who first
operationalizes it ("We can use newspaper and go like that [shake it to make
wind]") and Lindsy immediately offers, less assertively, the sensible
alternative of simply blowing --
[this moment could serve as an opening for a discussion of what counts as
(individual) agency]
At first, both girls were leaning slightly towards each other; at this
point, when they lean down to write, their heads are almost touching.
Then Lindsy seeks evidence again that they are on the same page -- that they
have agreed on the object-germ (the object-of-the-moment that will grow
under joint activity)....
LEFTY writes in her journal without consulting Lindsy about what to say, and
Lindsy constructs evidence of jointness out loud, explicating what are the
agreed-upon procedures....
I have seen consistent evidence of object-oriented interaction in
transcripts of math discussions from a longitudinal mathematics project,
which struck me as remarkable because there seemed to be virtually no
interpersonal negotiation. Students had different ideas for getting to the
answer, and tried them out together, divvying up tasks. I rarely see such
harmonious collaboration in classrooms where the object is more
open-ended....
I have read the articles by teachers Gordon has worked with, and I was duly
impressed then by what they were achieving. Still, like Nate and others
here, I want to see more of the way these and other teachers create the
conditions for collaborative inquiry, especially in inner city schools in
the U.S., which are less cosmopolitan than Toronto schools -- how they deal
with disruption, and how they do all this in different domains. I wonder if
Helena Wortham, who regularly observes interactions over ideologically riven
objects materials might say more about the negotiations she observes. I
would like to hear more about the sorts of objects that get constructed in
heterogeneous work settings....
judy
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Barowy
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: 11/4/2002 9:05 PM
Subject: Gordon's Land Yacht Movie
Hi Folks,
Gordon's Land Yacht Movie is up on the web, temporarily at the Lesley
U. site, for expedience.
There are two options. You'll need quicktime installed for either
option. First, there is the original quicktime movie. It is 24
MegaBytes in size, so expect a lengthy download, even with a fast
connection. If you are more interested in just hearing what happened,
or have slower connection, try the second option.
Second, there is a streaming audio version that is 2 MB in size, and
should be ok for connection speeds down to 56K modem -- but at this
lower limit there may be dropout. The advantage is that more people can
hear the streaming version, and the downside is that there is no visual.
1) 24 MB version VIDEO:
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/gwells/LandYacht.mov
2) 2 MB version STREAMING QUICKTIME AUDIO
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/gwells/LandYachtSound.mov
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 01 2002 - 01:00:07 PST