On the box, off the box – INF536 Blog Post 1

(a) Describe a problem space that is not serving the purpose it could do, for learning 

The orchestra my son was playing in during music camp had a very small podium to rehearse on – about 8mx4m for about 35-40 students including 1st, 2nd & 3rd violins, cellos, violas and double basses. The podium had an upright piano – which wasn’t being used but can be moved but not off the podium. The “norm” would for orchestras is almost double this – a recommended 1.7-2m2 per person – this particularly has to do with health and safety guidelines – for sound exposure (Sound Advice, 2007).

(b) Explain, using some of the suggested reading, why that space might benefit from some thinking on its design

The musicians only come together for four days of rehearsals with the final concert on the fifth day. Most do not speak English, and the average age was about 12 years – an interesting case of “extreme users” as suggested by Brown (2008) where an effective learning space is critical.

Kimbell refers to design thinking as “a set of contingent, embodied routines that reconfigure the sociomaterial world” (Kimbell, 2012, p. 141) – in this case the “embodied routine” of using a podium was limiting the efficacy of the space and not allowing “design in use”. Further the context of a junior amateur orchestra was not the embodied knowledge of the (professional) conductor which prevented a reconfiguration of space and thereby value.

The impact the limited space has includes the fact that it is very difficult for the conductor and the teachers aiding the orchestra to move between the ranks, and individual players – this is normal behaviour in amateur and student orchestras since the players are often too young to just take the instructions and write them in the music unaided, or even sometimes to understand exactly what is meant or asked for so this needs to be demonstrated in situe. All players should be able to see the conductor which was not the case.

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Day 1 – squeezing 38 players on a podium

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Viola players off the edge at the back

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First Violins nearly on the edge

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A lot of space and few observers

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Day 2, piano moved not much improvement

(c) Describe the changes, however small, you make to that space as a result, in order to attempt to create a better space for learning

The interesting part of the equation is although the podium is small, the rehearsal space is very big, and there are relatively few observers. Although I made the suggestion to the conductor that there was no particular need for the rehearsals to take place on the podium, and we as observers would be happy to sit in one part of the room while they took over the rest – he wasn’t open to the idea.

However, I saw my suggestion in action on the third day when I went to look at the rehearsal of another orchestra. Voila! This conductor obviously was not constrained by the box! The first violins, cellos and double basses sprawled over the front edge, as did the conductor and the spectators were pushed back.

Compared to the limited freedom of movement which leads to more cramped posture and claustrophobic feeling of the first orchestra, there was more space, and this space was used more often by the conductor and teacher-aides to move around the players and “show not tell” what they were requiring.

Why? I can only imagine that with six cello players needing chairs (as opposed to just three in the first orchestra) they just HAD to move down, it was no longer an option to stay “in the box” in this case the constraint was a source of inspiration, and flexibility of mind and “risk taking” behaviour was exhibited (Kuratko, Goldsby, & Hornsby, 2012).

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Conductor off the box!

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Violins have plenty of space

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Cellos spread out. Violas on the podium

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no-one falling off the edge!

References:

Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84–92. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=heh&AN=32108052&site=ehost-live

Kimbell, L. (2012). Rethinking design thinking: Part II. Design and Culture, 4(2), 129–148. http://doi.org/10.2752/175470812X13281948975413

Kuratko, D. F., Goldsby, M. G., & Hornsby, J. S. (2012). The design-thinking process. In Innovation acceleration: transforming organizational thinking (1st ed, pp. 103–123). Boston: Pearson.

Sound Advice. (2007). Sound Advice Note 12 – Orchestras. Retrieved July 22, 2015, from http://www.soundadvice.info/thewholestory/san12.htm

Post-script

Funnily enough I did ask my son and his fellow other viola players how they felt as well as the other parents. The students were a lot less indignant than their parents. Is it because they are much younger and have less insight and perspective? Or is it because they are more happy to accept what someone in authority decides? Or do they get less upset and excited generally about this type of thing? Didn’t it matter enough? Would it have mattered more if it went on for a longer period of time? Anyone have suggestions? Do we care too much?

Don’t break my heart

I’ve just spent 5 days at the Suzuki European Convention, accompanying my cello playing daughter and viola playing son, which was a brilliant opportunity to observe some very hardworking and talented students and teachers in action. There are group classes, orchestra classes, concerts and a lot of playing and learning for the students, the teachers who are not teaching the class but observing classes and of course the parents.
Since my current course is INF536 “Designing spaces for learning” I was particularly interested in seeing how thinking about space and learning was incorporated into the lessons.  The idea of space is an interesting one. I do not have any power over changing a learning environment, since I am an observer and living in a hotel, however I can make some comments on what I have seen around me.
The first thing I have noticed is that we should not limit our considerations about space to physical space.  One of the interesting things is how the temporal space of timetabling is used.  Each group starts the morning with a “play in” – with all children at all levels attending. Then there are group classes depending on levels interspaced with orchestra (for the higher levels) and free time, during which students are free to wander into other orchestra rehearsals or to observe classes of their own or other instruments.  Building “space” into “time” can also have an impact on learning.
Within the structure of the class the teachers (who are all very skilled “master” teachers) build in playing and learning and working (Kuratko, Goldsby, & Hornsby, 2012) through alternating fun activities with advice on technique, dynamics and other musical issues, as well as the hard work of repetition until the desired effect is achieved.
One lesson that stood out was an advanced class that was working on the Haydn Cello concerto with Takao Mizushima.  First the class all played a section together. Then each student had to play it separately while he made comments and suggestions for improvement. All students play to a very high standard, but over the years various habits and issues with posture can creep in which may be expeditious in the beginning, but over time will compromise the quality of sound.  In this instance the learning space is the cello and the bow and in fact limited to a very small section of the cello, namely the area from where the finger board ends to the bridge as well as the C Bouts (see below).
The area of learning indicated by the red circle
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An important aspect of sound relates to bowing. Ideally the bow should be at right angles to the string and should remain at right angles even as the cellist moves from string to string – which requires adjustment of the whole arm.  The video below explains this – in a rather boring fashion. (Note there are exceptions to this “rule” such as in baroque playing or when a specific sound needs to be created).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v20gjN3yTLY


As the boy finishes playing, the teacher praises him for his interpretation and then says, “please don’t break my heart” – he moves to his bag and gets a roll of sticky tape and fashions a heart out of the tape. He then places the tape on the tip of the C Bout (as illustrated in 3 below) and instructs the student to play the passage again.  At no point does he tell the student he’s bowing incorrectly (as illustrated in 2 below) but the student in question and all the students around him immediately get the point of what was wrong.  He plays again, to animated “acting” by the teacher about his heart not being broken and the bowing is better.  The ‘goal post’ is then shifted (as illustrated in 4) and the bowing is even better.

An illustration of the lesson components

Enjoy the video – the quality is not very good as individuals are not focused on to protect their privacy.

Don’t break my heart from Nadine Bailey on Vimeo.

The lessons I drew from this were the making of a design change – in this case introducing a constraint, display (playing with the constraint) and replay (moving the constraint) with the feedback to both the participant in question and all the learners around, as well as to the audience of a teaching “trick” that is effective.

Forced constraints

The third interesting observation was during a cello class today.  The teacher was trying to get the students to reign in their youthful exhuberance during a piece, and she deliberately introduced a constraint in order to get them to “feel” what she was trying to teach.  She got them all to turn the bow around so they were playing it the wrong way around and then to put their grip really close to the end and only play on that part.  They were then allowed a little more space and then to play normally again – mission accomplished.

ePortfolio – a counterview

As part of my ‘onboarding’ I was watching this video and thinking about it as it relates to what I’ve been observing.

I’ve been blogging for a long time and have used it to document my learning and understanding about a wide range of things, including my children’s development, learning chinese, coming to grips with living in different cultures and most recently as I continue my tertiary education.

I think Dr. Barrett has some very valid points. BUT. It really all depends on who is initiating the creation of the portfolio.  If I look at my children for example. I have a child who is a serial obsessive and during an obsession will spend every waking moment learning everything he needs to know about his desired topic. This includes joining online chat groups, watching youtube videos, experimentation, talking to people, finding experts and grilling them.  However he’s not a keen writer or documenter so this will never go beyond what we as a family observe and what teachers may notice and appreciate (or even document themselves). If I look back at his “compulsory” school learning portfolio I see little or no evidence of this learning. Does this mean it didn’t happen? Or that it’s not appreciated or meaningless? It’s in fact one of the things that happen that allow me to have complete faith that regardless of school grades “he’ll be ok”.  Gee made the same point in his discussion on passionate affinity spaces.

A friend of mine recently confided that her son had decided to “drop out” of school just before his final year.  I know a couple of other highly intelligent very motivated high school students who are at risk. Their problem? Not that they’re struggling with the subject matter but that they’re struggling with the matter of subjects. Often they seem to be just the students who DO know what their calling is and everything else on offer (demand) is just so much noise.

Out of the school environment, with the assumption that individuals are studying a subject of interest and choice another issue seems to arise.  Fear / embarrassment. So many of my cohort – otherwise accomplished, intelligent and knowledgeable individuals struggle to the point of refusal to document their learning process. This belies the fact that the whole point is to document a process rather than an outcome. It’s also a very flawed view. What parent would refuse to video their child learning to roll over, sit, crawl, stand up and finally walk but say “I’ll wait until they walk because all the rest is just practise for that end goal”?  I think as adult learners we do everyone else coming after us a disservice by not showing our mistakes and errors in thinking and assumptions and unpolished learning – because if they can’t see the steps the end-goal seems so much less attainable.

So I guess the thing is yes to ePortfolios but perhaps negotiation as to the content and topics.

New Semester, new course: Designing spaces for Learning

Just started delving into the outline and introduction of INF536 my new course for this semester.  It feels like INF530 has barely finished and now it’s already time to move on.

I’m moving on in more ways that one. At the end of last term I unexpectedly found a “look-see” at a school library after expressing vague interest in an opening turning into a job interview and then a job offer and then another interview at another school and another job offer and then the agonising choice between two excellent but very very different opportunities!  The tyranny of choice.  After a sleepless night and an early morning (like 4am early – another interesting TED talk by Rives – see below), and the input of my entire family a choice was made and I’m going to be leaving my great but part-time and low-paying apprenticeship type job for a real “the buck stops here” job as Teacher-Librarian.

https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/rives_on_4_a_m.html

Which makes me even more excited about this course, because I must admit my heart did sink just a tiny little bit when I saw the small space that will be my new “domain”. But then I am heartened by the idea that there is value to be found in constraint. And that the physical space is but one part of where learning takes place. And that I’m going to be learning and doing and learning so this will be a “just in time” course for me.

Literacy is not enough: Why we need to teach information literacy

Some weeks are just like hitting the jackpot in terms of the news and media world shouting out “yes, this is necessary” – although of course they don’t phrase it that way, and they certainly wouldn’t invoke libraries, librarians and information literacy in their communal hand wringing. But they should.

The first was the retraction of an article in Science. (Retraction watch – who knew that it even existed? And now I know it’s going to be on my reading list from time to time! They’re on twitter @RetractionWatch so that makes it easier – makes me think of “This idea must die” which is also on my reading list after hearing this talk).

Jesse Singal has written an excellent article – “The Case of the Amazing Gay-Marriage Data” – it really is worth reading the whole thing because it covers so many aspects of the world of academic publishing, how it can go badly wrong, and just how unlikely it is that it is found out and even if it’s found out, how hard it is to be a whistleblower.

The second, was about chocolate, and how unfortunately it doesn’t help in weight loss and in fact we’d all just been had as it was a bunch of science writers playing with journalists and our gullibility and lack of information literacy.  Here is John Bohannon, the culprit (?) ‘fessing up: “I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here’s How” and Rachel Ehrenberg’s indignant retort on behalf of journalists “Attempt to shame journalists with chocolate study is shameful“
Obviously (one hopes) this is going to have repercussions in tertiary education and in journalism. But what can we learn from it in the K-12 environment?
Well a good place to start would probably be to introduce students to the concept of cognitive bias (and to do it WAY before they’re doing TOK at IB level).  Here is a great little article by George Dvorsky on the twelve most common cognitive biases. Let’s get everyone thinking – a little assignment for my readers – post in the comments what cognitive biases were present in each case! Just as we teach our G4’s about marketing tricks of the trade, I’m sure this can be presented in a way that is accessible and easy to understand and relate to their own lives. 
I’m also thinking about how we could expand the math curriculum to replace a fear of numbers and statistics with a healthy dose of scepticism and what questions to ask and how to dig behind the “headline” numbers. I sometimes wonder why it is that we don’t challenge our students more about their own data.  Thinking back to the exhibition presentations of our Grade 5’s – yes they did a great job, and it was amazing what they pulled together and the confidence with which they could present. But who was looking at the data? Each group had a mentor, who could (should?) challenge when things don’t add up, when what they’re saying and what they can back it up with doesn’t match. When things just don’t make common logical sense.   Now this is a tricky thing. A very tricky thing. We don’t like confrontation, and we’re not really good at it either.  Now look back at the first article.  If the co-author had applied a little common sense and said “hey, if you’ve sampled 100,000 people, how did you get the $1m budget? (simple multiplication / extrapolation)” 
… how about Brookman? Things don’t make sense to him, and what’s everyone saying? “don’t rock the boat”  And our students. Yes we want to created a safe learning environment where mistakes can be made.  BUT and this is a big BUT, we also want to be able to call them on their mistakes, give them a chance to correct them and build the resilience of being able to cope appropriately with (constructive) criticism AND the idea that this research thing is serious, and can and will be up to challenge, AND make them think more critically about how they interpret and use other’s research.  I was not a part of the whole process and I know our digital literacy coaches and librarian were involved, I’m wondering if the math coach was also involved or not?  And in a school without a math coach – who would be doing this?  How many teachers at any level feel comfortable and confident enough around numbers and the “math” side of research to assume this role?  I’d argue all should be, and if not that’s some PD that needs to be done as a priority. Because in the future and in the now, numbers are being used all around us, and the big big thing is “big data” and if we don’t know how to look at numbers and to ask the right kinds of questions we are going to be manipulated into making the wrong assumptions, making the wrong choices. This stuff is important. (See my favourite math blogger Mathbabe on this).
All of us are literate in the sense of reading and writing. And some of us are critical readers of literature, we can analyse and comment and dissect. And then we get into the realm of being information literate, on the basic level, the whole model thing of finding a question, finding information, interpreting and using it, reflecting etc.  And then only can we get to the point of understanding who is writing something and why and then really understanding the socio-cultural / political and meta-cognitive things that are going on behind information. And if we don’t start with the basics and make sure it’s embedded in everything we do, how will we ever get there?

Articles and Publications


iBook: Digital Language Learning Ecology – June 2015

IASL Conference 2015:
Boelens, H., Cherek, J., Tilke, A., & Bailey, N. (2015). Communicating across cultures: cultural identity issues and the role of the multicultural, multilingual school library within the school community. In Manuscript submitted for presentation IASL2015. Maastricht, Netherlands.


INCITE magazine: 
Bailey, N. (2014). Getting Organised Digitally. INCITE, 35(10), 24. Retrieved from https://www.alia.org.au/sites/default/files/Incite%20October%202014_EEI.pdf

Livin’ and learnin’

Now that I’ve started breathing again I can start to think about the iBooks experience and what I’ve learnt from it.

I found out today that there are no iBooks in Singapore where I’m living and where I wrote / produced / cobbled together my first iBook. Nope, none. Something I didn’t really actually realise. I mean I’d tried to buy Dave Caleb’s excellent photography iBook and couldn’t do it here, but I didn’t twig that I couldn’t buy ANY iBook here… and you know what’s really weird? I can’t find out why anywhere. Is is because “singapore” or is it because “apple”? I notice my home country has a similar problem. Who decides? Who’s the boss.  And who would care anyway, especially for a free home-made stitched together effort? I need to know these things.  I’m sure my curiosity and sense of fairness will get me into trouble some time.

 

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What would I advice people coming after me? Play with it in your spare time, NOT when you have an assignment deadline. Make something simple, low barrier, low stakes and iron out all the learning and mistakes before you use it for a major assignment. Or maybe better still – get a class of 11 year olds to do it for you!

If you do use it for an assignment – be ready at least 48 hours before the due date. It takes 24 hours more or less from the time you hit the “submit” button to when it’s live, and then you get a nasty little surprise that things that may have worked in iBooks author and on your previews, suddenly don’t work so well in the published book. I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that the widgets for feeding in video, twitter etc. are handled by Bookry.com and I probably overloaded it with too many requests one after the other – the weird thing is both the display AND the functionality was fine in author … and then when I pressed “play” in iBooks 3 of the videos just reverted to the last loaded video… oops.  So I corrected that and then reloaded it, and it will take another 24 hours before it’s working…

Oh, and another thing with Bookry – well it seems you can publish directly there, BUT if you try and download the app on your mac it doesn’t like it one bit …

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I’m 100% sure this is not an insurmountable problem and with enough time and patience I could get it to work. But both time and patience were in rather short supply yesterday afternoon / evening.

 

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It also helps to ask around a lot. One of my friends when she heard I was going to use iBooks author said “oh no, I hear that’s really difficult. Our tech guy at school suggests that our kids use Book Creator for iPad instead. Unfortunately I was about 80% finished by the time she said that … although the 80:20 rule definitely applied at that point – I thought I was at 80%

And if you export it to pdf, note that the pdf can be a maximum of 10MB for this wordpress platform … mine was 20MB after the correct videos were updated, so can’t fly here … maybe I can publish it to the web (thinking aloud) …

I’d also like to say it is wonderful having a cohort of selfless fellow students around you who make encouraging noises about the things that do work publicly and kindly point out this kind of snafu to you privately. lol you know who you are!

Another lesson – never do this type of thing over a long-holiday weekend. You may think it’s a good idea, but then you can’t access all the tech guru’s in your life because, well, they’re having a life with their families and #notfair to disturb them.

1 ibooks author intro from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Of course the whole irony of this learning stuff is that we don’t do it unless we “have” to do it, and when we “have” to do it, it’s kind of high stakes if you get it wrong, so then you’d rather play safe and go with something you’re sure will work. I can see how this FOMM (fear of making mistakes) and FOF (fear of failure) can inhibit personal, academic, learning and technical progress.

What else did I want to do if I had endless time – or what I’d like to do some time? Well, really to get the whole “get started” thing going on how to implement a program.  I’d also love to write a Inklestudios book based on the stories of our students and their families and the many and varied choices and options on language, and put that into it … I’d also LOVE to have a designer and producer and team of creative people around me who can make a much better job on the design side – I mean I know something great when I see it, but just can’t seem to make it myself!  Has everyone see the Guardian’s latest interactive book on the digital language divide. Gosh they are so wonderful.  Maybe I can get a research job with them…  I’d like to interview some parents and put it on a video and add that… there is so much.

My new quote and drive on this whole language thing comes from this clickbait collection:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist

Mad rush to the finish line

Well it’s done! Well it’s kind of done. The digital essay part is done and I’ve got all the little interactive bits and pieces and I hope they work in real life and not just in preview.

Thanks to Sharon who has also been experimenting with iBooks author and was the crucial hour or so ahead of me to warn me of the pitfalls (only published within 24 hours of submission – YIKES) and the work-arounds – export to pdf.

Of course I was overly ambitious – this is not just a digital essay but I want it to be so much more. I want to expand it as a guide to the implementation of a digital language learning ecology at a school. So I do have blank chapters and LOTS of ideas. Of course this can be added to over time.

INF530 Digital Essay

This is the pdf which will have to do for now, because the iBooks file is WAY to big for what thinkspace will allow me …

Some reflections on the essay process:

I should have just written the essay first. But I was jumping between experimenting with the new tool for me that is iBooks author and writing. Maybe the affordances of iBooks informed my writing, maybe it just fuzzed it.

I’ve been meaning to play with iBooks for a long time and I keep on quitting – I can see why now. It’s not the most intuitive of tools and can be darn frustrating. It’s not drag and drop and thank heavens for bookry.com (and google / youtube for all the “how to”). The thing I most resent right now is the inability to drag and drop html code into an interactive box. Yes it can be done but it involved downloading programming apps and way too much effort and concentration for what I’m capable of doing right now.

Other things that I missed that I would have liked – there is interaction, but it’s limited (or I’m useless) – like in my resources section I would have loved to add a form where people could submit their own resources, hashtags, blogs, information etc. but that doesn’t seem to be easy.

Also the quiz feature is a little primitive – I wanted to add my “do your own language audit” but then more snazzy – where you answer the questions and then get rated out of 10 whether you’re going to be able to maintain your L1 at home. Nope. Wasn’t going to happen – or at least not easily.

Then other frustrations that are totally related to time and not knowing all my tools as well as I should – I use Pages a LOT at work as my “go to” graphics design thing. I’ve become pretty comfortable with it now, which means I’ve gone and remade a lot of graphics I’d made in the past for other presentations and essays that I thought would be of interest here. But there is only an “export to pdf” function. So if I want a PNG or a JPG I have to either make a screen shot or export to pdf, open the pdf into preview and then save it as a png. TIME SUCK!  Like I say, I’m probably using the wrong tool and need to get a bit more sophisticated in my design tool, but if you have a hammer ….

It also really makes me appreciate SpringShare’s Libguides so much more! That’s really intuitive and easy to use, but wouldn’t really work for this as it’s non-linear.

Not sure what I’m going to do for my submission now – all I can say is YAY for Visek (Buddhas’ birthday) day, since that meant I didn’t have to go to work AND my husband took my “busy needs attention” kid away for a few days.

Here’s a pretty picture to end it off – my new ideas on what constitutes a “good language learner” in the digital language learning ecology.

Good language learning in DLLE