A Collaborative Lesson...
For this project, my interest was in creating a simple framework that could channel information between individuals, offering learning opportunities in an open-ended system. In this way, the end result was a collaborative lesson where the “educators” are located independently from myself as the project coordinator. “Teaching moments” occurred over the course of several days as “pupils” sought out “teachers” to teach them a new word and then channel that word back to me. The goal of this lesson was to invert the traditional model of the teacher/expert who possesses the information to be taught, and instead, open the doors to anyone serving as a teacher and myself, the coordinator, having no control over the information being taught. Teachers ranged from 3-year-olds to real estate agents to professors to correction officers to housewives. The hierarchy of “expert as educator” was flattened by this diversity.
The primary mode of communication was via email, with an initial “group email” being sent out to the potential “pupils.” Most of the communication remained in email form, although a few physical notes were passed. The geographic range of involvement included California, Minnesota, Kentucky and Ohio. The final “product” of this project is a website blog where the lessons were posted as well as two mappings of the project that detail the basic structure of the lesson as well as the actual interactions that took place as of April 4th, 2006 at 5:30 p.m. (see below).
posted by tim @ 10:50 AM
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