Re: online seminar (tools > structure)

From: Kevin Rocap (krocap@csulb.edu)
Date: Mon Sep 16 2002 - 09:26:12 PDT


Dear friends,

I replied to David personally with a bit of an introduction and thanked
him for the reminder to fully sign my name occasionally as new folks
will come along all the time on this and other listservs.

I like simple also (but I know that some folks are looking for the
experience with Knowledge Forum).

Perhaps there could be a specific activity along the way that makes use
of Knowledge Forum so that people get to be hands-on and feel apprised
of its uses and affordances? Also, a little reading of Bereiter and
Scardamalia (the applied cognitive scientists who developed the earlier
version of KF, CSILE, and theorize about the need to learn to become
"expert") and an examination of some of the ways KF is used, in addition
to using it, could actually turn out to be an interesting CHAT case
study for the group. No?

At our Center we've mounted international learning modules (we're about
to start one now) that make use of a web page or a small website with
links to the WebBoard for discussion and use of a listserv as well (the
listserv is mostly for quick, informal and social discussion among
participants and for announcements and is separate from the online
threaded discussion). But actually because of the WebBoard affordances
for e-mail, this "general" communicative function could be handled over
e-mail through the WebBoard and still be archived as a threaded
conference that doesn't overlap with any of the reflection and
discussion of specific strands.

As for the videoconferencing option. Any good videoconferencing
equipment will generally allow for a "streaming session." That is a
videoconference that is more presentational in nature. Only a few sites
(maybe up to four) would actually be interacting, but many others can be
pointed to a web page where the videoconference might be viewed (those
these things till run into bumps and barriers). If you want audience
participation, you could use a listserv, chat or the WebBoard again, to
collect questions/comments from those who are watching (CNN-style).

Just to add a bit more to the tools/logistics discussion. So much of
this is about reading text and engaging in dialogue that it seems to me
a threaded discussion works just fine (the WebBoard web-based threads
can also be viewed as Newsgroups, by the way, which are sometimes easier
for folks with low-bandwidth to access and give them the full view of
the conversation and not just the e-mail in the INBOX, though saving
those e-mails would accomlish the same thing pretty much).

My suggestion might be that Strands be organized as "conferences" in a
WebBoard-type software (I guess any conferencing software). Then the
initial message in each Strand Conference will be a "Strand Outline"
Topic that would identify facilitators of the strand, if any, would
outline the parameters of the strand and would contain all links to
sources such as articles, books, web pages and/or files that the Strand
will use as core texts, and would also outline Strand activities (if
these are known in advance). Any "Topics" implied by the outline or the
activities would also be set up, in advance, under each Strand
Conference. Though anyone can strike up a new "Topic" at any time.
Messages under any Topic and replies to a Topic or messages on any topic
constitute a Topic thread. All of the Topics and their messages
combined are a Conference thread.

Who will be making final decisions? I'm game for anything, personally.

In Peace,
K.
(Kevin Rocap, Director, Program & Development, Center for Language
Minority Education and Research, California State University, Long
Beach)



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