Mozzadrella

Daniel Tammet: Perception and What Poets Do

mozzadrella — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 17:04:10 +0000

In my theory, language evolves in such a way that sounds match correspond with the subjective, with the personal, intuitive experience of the listener.

Words like numbers express fundamental relationships between objects and events and forces that constitute our world.

It stands to reason that we existing in this world should in the course of our lives absorb intuitively those relationships, and poets, like other artists, play with those intuitive understandings.

That’s exactly what we do as poets. We make use of the contours of words. We appeal to human, long-standing relationships with words–both their overt and inert meanings. Achieving harmony between the perception of words and the experience associated with them–that’s what makes poems “work.”

There’s another piece about style, about a unique approach to describing the world. But really what Tammet describes–”that the world is richer, and vaster than it too often seems to be”–that’s step number one in seeing the world like a poet.

Mozzadrella on Badges: A Refined Opinion

mozzadrella — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 08:42:02 +0000

It’s been a badge-heavy week. I’ve known that both of my instructors at MIT, Mitch Resnick (Lifelong Kindergarden Lab) and Sherry Turkle aren’t keen on them—they’ve both mentioned that badges were the exact opposite of the way we should be thinking about lifelong learning.

So I was surprised when they changed the reading of this week to the Mozilla Open Badges white paper. As a member of the Peer 2 Peer University community (an organization that uses badges), I went into the conversation with the posture:

badges recognize the learning happening everywhere
an open badge system can evolve faster than slower institutions of learning
easy entry into technical and artistic experiences is good for culture–open learning+badges supports that process
I also don’t really see what the all the wrist-wringing is about.

They also assigned Alfie Kohn, who came to our class and challenged the concept of badges (in an extremely spirited fashion). Kohn points to the lingering beliefs about behaviorism in our culture–that where education fails is when we offer direct rewards for performance. He points to research that shows that folks perform less creatively and generally worse over time whenever there’s a reward involved. Rewards damage our culture, according to Kohn, when they create a society of folks expecting “tokens” for their performance—this gesture makes people self-centered, less intrinsically motivated, and less curious.

And I bristled at this. It’s counter to my experience with P2PU.

I spend time with Peer 2 Peer University because I enjoy it. And when I see the badges I’ve earned, they remind me of the amazing P2PU Community and the projects that I’m proud of. I don’t even think I buy the extrinsic versus intrinsic debate–people come to P2PU for so many reasons, and a whole host of motivations. Open learning, unlike many other learning structures, isn’t really a simple rewards situation–a “you do this, you get that” economy–because we all help each other.

To me, badges are a reflection of a suite of experiences I’ve had. Because of this, I tend to look at them after the fact, as a collection, as something I’d probably be doing anyway–but P2PU facilitated the connection.

I refuse to limit the learning experience to the badge alone—to render the experience an object. These badges are stories—rich and evolving and unexpected. And I think it’s this limited sense of “badge as object” that many folks take issue with. I just don’t read it that way.

As I start day 2 at Mozilla Media Freedom and the Web Festival in London, I’m glad to have spent that time sharpening my ideas on the subject. So far, school has been a sustained time for me to reflect on pieces I’ve been mulling over for years—and that’s really one of the best outcomes I could expect for it.

Ongoing Assessment & the Power of Open Writing

mozzadrella — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:02:01 +0000

I believe in ongoing assessment. I agree with the necessity of a continuous feedback loop in writing, involving peers in early draft stages, showing writing as a process of revision, and sharing the results with a wide audience.

When Martha Stone Wiske refers to the positive benefits of students sharing their final writing products with a wide audience: “Such presentations may constitute the most authentic form of assessment when the goal of learning is to develop learner’s capacity to exercise a positive influence in the world” (2005 p.95) this expresses how I see the power of open learning, and the model I work towards with Peer 2 Peer University.

Something that Tracy and I encountered in our P2PU couse was a hesitance to critique each other’s work–despite peer feedback’s established worth. We need to think about the writing prompt, self-reflection and peer feedback as one loop, perhaps even one step, to remove any inertia or mental roadblocks to valid & robust peer assessment.

Tracy and I have been working on a writing product to prompt students to think in terms of drafts and the quality of peer feedback–and I can’t wait to show it to you all.

Working Out Digital Shyness

mozzadrella — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:38:24 +0000

My advisor Stone Wiske is amazing. Her ability to synthesize information and pull a group together is uncanny. I really appreciate that she doesn’t just teach the Teaching for Understanding Framework–backward design, users selecting their own content, etc–it’s also the backbone of our class.

To wit, she’s asked us to reflect upon our posting habits for the online portion of the course. And this was a fruitful exercise–especially for me.

For the listservs that I’m on and the articles I read, I’ve sort of let the content wash over me. I’ve had to propel myself to jump in to conversations I know only kernels about. Posting to a wide audience is intimidating. The weird part is, I would totally talk about it the articles or issues later that day, in public. Was I just digitally shy?

I’m working on exposing the things I don’t know, opinions that aren’t well-formed, arguments I’m leery of engaging with. The course’s required posts–this “training”–has prompted me to comment on and apply knowledge outside of class with several sites I wouldn’t have engaged previously.

Which is to say I’m retraining myself when it comes to commenting. In my “old world,” if I engaged once, I could cross that item off my list. I have trouble circling back. I am that person who disappears. It’s extremely time consuming to keep track of massive conversations–it’s far easier to archive them and move on.

The 2x/week posting requirement is somewhat arbitrary–you obviously don’t have to post to anything in your “real” internet life. But the need to keep up with an ongoing conversation is very real. The need to keep up with an online dialogue might be, from my point of view, the most realistic aspect about the course.

I hope to keep up the “good” behavior–regularly applying and engaging–because it’s the right thing to do, good practice.

How can I culture “digital confidence” with Hack this Poem at P2PU? The “mentorship” idea over at Webcraft is a great one–newbies and veterans connect around a task. This makes the community feel smaller than a massive echo of a post no one responds to. I’m less afraid to show my mistakes or admit I don’t know. And this keeps me from “dropping out.” It’s awesome.

Make Way for Peer Feedback: Writing Composition

mozzadrella — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 20:42:28 +0000

A puzzle I’ve been struggling with for several years now is to find or make a scalable writing engine that’s open to schools and learning communities. Leveraging peer feedback is an affordable and pedagogically sound approach to writing instruction. Indeed, Garrison has highlighted the usefulness of rubrics as they apply to peer feedback, a lesson I’ve taken to heart.

Rubrics can also help students carefully judge the quality of the work and the work of their peers. When rubrics are used to guide self- and peer assessment, students become increasingly able to spot and solve problems in their own and in one another’s work. Also, rubrics can reduce the amount of time faculty spend evaluating student work. As an instructor, you may find that by the time an assignment has been self- and peer assessed in accordance with a rubric, you have little left to say about it (Garrison p. 137).

Indeed, peer feedback can only add to the sense of cohesion that a Community of Inquiry requires (Garrison 2011). Garrison also mentioned that there’s correlation between peer feedback leads to higher grads in asynchronous environments (location 371). As Thomas and Brown have noted, peer feedback is imminent as part of the “New Culture of Learning” (location 577).

For formal schools and informal learning environments, peer feedback makes sense.

But peer feedback has had some difficulty gaining traction and legitimacy when formalized in any way. PeerScholar, a peer assessment program for writing offered though Pearson Education, has even encountered some legal strife. At the institution of its creation, University of Toronto, a union grievance was brought against the University that peer assessment “took away” work from unionized teaching assistants. The case was settled for around $300,000.

How can we launch an affordable, scalable, sound tool that could really move the needle in the face of resistance? Tracy’s suggestion thus far is to have the community create the rubric (which is not a function offered by PeerScholar, to my knowledge) and we’ve done that in our P2PU Course.

We’ll find out how well that works with our learning community, and hopefully folks will mention it in their student satisfaction survey. I see a community-built rubric as a way to get students to own the learning (vs. TAs who “own” the grading). We’ve got to reframe this message. Suggestions welcome.

P2PU Poetry Learner Goals and Metacognition

mozzadrella — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:11:37 +0000

For the P2PU Course Hack this Poem, Tracy Tan and I put learner goals and metacognition front and center in its structure.

Previous courses have been content-centered–I selected poems that I thought were the best at what they did. Extended metaphor, voice and tone, deploying mystery–I had my pet poem for each box. Tracy’s input and recent reading have prompted us to recast the course as goal-centered. Instead of my favorite poems, what is it we really want learners to know, and what do they want to learn?

These considerations have radically changed the way we approach the P2PU Course for the better. Scholar Elsebeth Korsgaard Sorensen notes the tether between metacognition and collaborative dialogue which we hope to implement here. In the first week of the P2PU course we’ve asked learners break down their favorite poems into parts, they’ll be answering the question “this poem works because….” We’ll be pulling all of those aspects of “successful” poems together as the course’s rubric. Folks will evaluate themselves and each other based on a commonly-determined set of criteria. Each week will be a cyclical self-assessment, where the learner moves through the group-established objectives.

But while Sorensen makes note that we need to check course interactions that seem to go on without end (The Continuing Dialogue) course momentum isn’t discussed. How can we design courses with smart pacing to keep learners coming back? For P2PU, we’re releasing the course tasks 1 at time, per week, so the course comes in waves, and learners have fresh tasks and content to come back to week-to-week.

I’m Wary of Objects

mozzadrella — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:20:32 +0000

I’ve been reading about “Evocative Objects” which is to say I’ve been reading stories about folks who can tie their development to certain objects. For Sherry Turkle, “We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with.“

And I’m wary of this logic. Defining ourselves in terms of an encounter with one object?

While it is true that we all encounter objects, I’m not convinced we’re all transcended by objects. I could to tie myself to a particular object, but I don’t feel as if that’s a complete story. However, I do believe in the powerful effect of autobiography. Viewing objects as one approach to self-expression is an interesting path, as an anchoring one, I’m a bit suspicious.

Can we consider development in terms of “experiences” or “constellations of experiences” that occasionally involve objects, occasionally several objects? Which is not to say I’m dismissive of objects, or don’t value how people use them. I found Dr. Turkle’s exploration of children’s development in terms of realizing what objects have “inner life” compelling:

“By age eight, the same child might have learned to make a distinction between spontaneous movement (movement that an object can generate by itself) and movement imposed by an outside agent. This allows ‘the alive’ to be restricted to things that seem to move of their own accord: a dog, of course, but also the sun, the rain, a cloud. An object drops out of this category of alive when the child discovers outside force that accounts for its motion. So, at eight, the river may still be alive, because the child cannot yet account for its motion as coming from ‘outside of itself’ but the stone and the bicycle are not alive, because the child can” (From Child Philosophers, p. 43)

Last week I was wheeling my suitcase down North 3rd Street in Philadelphia. My suitcase has 4 wheels, which enables me to move it beside me (the design is something like this). As we walked toward the car, a puppy started barking wildly at it, moving away from it. The mysterious moving suitcase “spooked it.” I’ve also seen dogs react to bikes in a similar way–they don’t like how the objects seem to move of their own accord.

I think there’s a relative of that suspicion in adults when they first use a technology. If you hand a smart phone to someone for the first time, they’ll react with curiosity and try to push buttons. A second common reaction is “can it see me?” i.e. “is this device recording my actions or monitoring me?” An extremely common next interaction is that a program moves too fast or shuts the user out–and the user gets rattled or nervous, and they drop it.

In that moment, even in our adult stage of development, those objects have inner life which “spooks” the user.

Inquiry, Motivation, Diagnosis: How P2PU Poetry’s Been Revamped

mozzadrella — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 21:05:51 +0000

I’ve been reading about Learning Theories and Adult Education with interest, especially as Tracy Tan and I begin to revamp our P2PU course in light of Networked Learning. I’ve learned a lot from previous attempts at P2PU Courses and think I’m finally shaping the kind of facilitator I want to be.

Here are a few things I’ve been keeping in mind as we put together Hack this Poem: a Workshop, which is now open for sign up.

To wit:

Establishing a Community of Inquiry. Based on the comfort level and interest of the participants, we’ll be doing audio and video introductions, and talking about what makes a poem “good” in our first week. Folks will select their own content to De/compose, prompting them to comb through poetry websites or recall their favorites.
Evaluating Prior Experience of the Learner. We’re taking some time to assess the participants in the course at the outset. What are their perceived strengths? Weaknesses? Instead of posting all the materials for the course at once, I’m thinking about posting week-by-week to give us space to revamp the course in light of the learners in it. Though several of these principles existed in the P2PU Course Design already, I’d like ask learners about their experience and motivation before we start, so we can have a sense of why they’re interested in the course, and also so we can pair up more experienced people with less for mentorship to take place.
Reframing in terms of Hobbies. The Dooley team claims “Learners want to increase their competencies. They are motivated by internal motivators, such as learning for the sake of learning, self-esteem, enjoyment or quality of life. To a lesser degree, they are also motivated by external motivators, such as higher pay, better jobs or advancement opportunities” (Dooley p. 82). People are more motivated more by personal interest than professional advancement!!! This has direct implications for humanities-based or “long-tail” open courses. I thought these kinds of courses got lower enrollments than, say Javascript or PHP because learners needed those concrete skills for their jobs (the School of Webcraft listserv is massive, 5,000 people). But I haven’t framed “long tail” courses in terms of hobbies, or learning for learning’s sake.

Needless to say, this is very exciting.

In light of what I’ve learned about adult learners, we’ve revamped and relaunched everything, from course sign-up, selection of content, and assessment. P2PU asks course participants to complete a signup task before starting the course. In my experience, facilitators usually use it to get participants to prove they’re committed, so the course task resembles the exercises conducted in the class. I’ve done that before, and I think it might drive folks away and doesn’t give the kind of benchmark data with which to adjust the course. Instead, I’ve put together a survey that asks for:
1.) The reason they joined the course
2.) Their experience with poetry and workshop
3.) What they’d like to do for their summative assessment–should we make a kindle version of our poems? Have a class blog? A virtual reading? What are their ideals?
4.) Signature of a social contract that they are going to be good human beings

Hack this Poem will run from October 1s-November 1st. We hope you’ll join us!

Check out my first Scratch Project! (Click through to Scratch site)

mozzadrella — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:04:23 +0000

This project is the 1st assignment in the MIT Media Lab course “Technologies for Creative Learning” and my very first visual programming project.
I drew background brocade wallpaper from a colorful host apartment I stayed in during a recent trip to Montreal.
The color scheme itself is my favorite palette I use for my interior designs.
The text comes from my notes for our first class. I was interested in the inflections of the words refracted through student notes, (may they be accurate or otherwise) and also the new meanings they compile in this context.

Blended Learning and Educational UX

mozzadrella — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:10:36 +0000

I’m in a blended classroom. No, it’s not learning + materials, mix at high speed to a frappe. Blended, or inverted classrooms, are said to combine the best of the digital and face to face classroom features, and it’s coming to a location near you. Todd Rose, Research Scientist at CAST and Instructor for Educational Neuroscience at Harvard, manages the balance between online and offline activities expertly.

Inverted classrooms were conceived as a way to manage teacher time. What makes them “inverted” is that some of the lecture is online, and the discussion is started there, which frees up the face-2-face time in the classroom to get into the nitty gritty, to do collaborative work or activities, as opposed to doing the “primer” work of lecture. This method leans on the online component to do a lot of the heavy lifting of instruction.

Todd Rose gets it. He gets that successful courses involve re-exposing students to the material again and again and again, so he uses both the digital and face-2-face mediums to make sure we understand what he wants students to know.

He designs a successful educational experience.

He’s an educational UX’er. To wit:

Visual communication–Rose asks students to watch several “Brain Matters” videos each week. His videos consistently feature him as a central speaker, flanked by the discussion outline to the left, and a highlighted image of the part of the brain being discussed.

You can find all the “Brain Matters” videos here.

Immediate self-assessment–Rose directs students to electronic quizzes on the material immediately after the videos. He uses the power of self-testing as an instruction tool.
Storytelling, variation and humor–he integrates all 3 aspects into his lectures to ensure solid memory encoding

Any course design is constructing a kind of experience, but Rose’s all-media fronts learning shows an intentional, pedagogical, user-centered quality that we look for in good UX. He manufactures interest in way that makes the material “sticky” which is a lesson we can apply to all digital experiences.