How to Avoid Whirling Blades…- ****
This roundtable session on Thursday led me to cross paths with Scott Adams who was wearing a t-shirt: I’m Blogging This. I thought that was a clever joke. And it was, considering the state of wireless access at the conference.
This was a great roundtable. It was rather coincidental that when Joanne got to the explanation of the importance of a moderator in online discussion based on the research of David Winograd, who should show up but David Winograd. Coincidence?
It was the first roundtable I have ever attended and the scheduling of this conference really helped to showcase roundtables and make them an option to attend since there weren’t 200 concurrent sessions at the same time. This was a great example of a well-prepared presentation, based on a research study and with engaging dialogue of the study and the issues it brought out. Because the study was about a discussion forum for a landscape architecture class, Joanne brought up the point that one of the challenges was the disconnect of what students were rewarded for (exploring natural space, rather than sitting on a computer) and what they were being asked to do (sit on a computer). I like that she referred to this as the rituals of the field, as I hadn’t been thinking of the discipline as a very specific culture—but it’s a great reminder that in every context, we need to be aware of the cultural context and potential disconnects of the behaviors of the culture and what we want people in the culture to be doing. And then, I think, we need to ask the question WHY we are asking them to do it? It seems that often these top-down initiatives to integrate technology into instruction even in places where it is not an appropriate match and there is instructor resistance does even more of a disservice (students are exposed to ineffective implementation of technology and are thus turned off to future experiences).
Technorati Tags: AECT
