Situation Report: Notes from my AERA experience Pt. 2

Purple Chair, Downtown; Denver, Colorado

Here are my takeaways/notes from a May 2nd session titled Web 2.0: Research Issues, Results, and Future Directions hosted by Lynne Schrum and starring Chris Dede, Dan Hickey, Diane Jass Ketelhut, Donald Leu, and Allan Collins.

These reflections are my synthesized notes and not direct quotations. My hand/brain speed and coordination are no match for the rate of human speech, but, I do try. Enjoy!

• Web 2.0 = Rorschach test — there is no one right answer/definition. It’s what we make it. (Dede)

• Web 2.0 or interactive media permits creativity, collaboration, co-creating and sharing. (FYI)

• I used to believe in collective intelligence until I attended my last faculty meeting (Dede).

• Link love: University of Pittsburgh Learn Lab: http://www.learnlab.org/research/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

• New digital media are easy to use, but not easy to use well (Dede).

• New digital media requires fluency in their rhetoric/critical thinking skills (Dede).

• Web 2.0 redefines what, how, and with whom we learn (Dede).

• In most formal learning environments, new digital media is still an add-on (Dede).

• We should be using new digital media to support wisdom building (Dede).

• Wisdom includes*:

1. A cognitive dimension involving rich understanding of a variety of intellectual disciplines and fields
2. A practical-experiential dimension of sophisticated, pragmatic comprehension about how to act given the unresolvable questions, philosophic issues, and unavoidable problems (such as personal mortality) associated with everyday life (Baltes & Smith, 1990)
3. An interpersonal dimension of insightfully appreciating the interactions and contributions of diverse groups, cultures, and societies in shaping civilization
4. An ethical dimension encompassing what the ancient Greeks meant by “knowing and doing the good”
5. A metacognitive dimension of reflective judgment, awareness of the limitations of knowing and of how  these limitations affect the resolution of ill-defined problems (Birren & Fisher, 1990; Kitchener & Brenner, 1990).

This definition draws from, but is more limited than, the concept of extraordinary wisdom delineated by Randall and Kenyon (2001).

• What should we as a society be investing in to support the development of wisdom in children and adults? (Dede)

• Achievement tests undermine achievement in schooling (Hickey).

• If you haven’t already, go read Understanding By Design by Wiggins and McTighe.

• Participatory assessment offers a new way to examine student work that supports a student-centered approach. (Hickey)

• Social collaboration sites present a rich resource for exploring identity for teachers and youth. (Ketelhut)

• For many pre-service teachers, there is a reported incoherence between their online identity and their in-class identity. Specifically, their in-class identity conflicted with their online identity. (Ketelhut)

• When examing online identity issues, consider examining Kegan‘s (1996) model of psychological development consisting of six “equilibrium stages”: the incorporative stage, the impulsive stage, the imperial stage, the interpersonal stage, the institutional stage, and the inter-individual stage. (Ketelhut)

• The Internet presents a reading comprehension issue for learners. (Leu)

• The Internet presents a literacy issue. (Leu)

• If the use of the Internet is limited to educational technology courses, subject area specialists will defer responsibility for integrating it into their curriculum. (Leu)

• For new digital media to be taken seriously in education, it needs to be integrated into subject areas more completely, not as an add-on. (Leu)

• Online reading represents a problem-based comprehension issue. (Leu)

• Web 2.0 is a static construct; we should recognize it as New Literacies instead. (Leu)

• To advance this notion, teacher education must focus on pedagogy, skill development, and a health professional development diet. (Leu)

• It is important for all educators to consider: What should we be teaching in classrooms? (Collins)

• What is important to learn? (Collins)

• What about Web 2.0 or New Literacies fosters wisdom? (Collins)

• New digital media does nothing to promote morals or ethics. (Collins)

• Web 2.0 has insiders and outsiders. (Collins)

• School culture (closed) contrasts Web 2.0 culture (open). (Collins)

• Do social collaboration and social networking sites invite us to questions our identities? (Collins)

• Web 2.0 is making the equity problem in schools worse. (Collins)

• There will be a tremendous price to pay if we do not address this participatory divide. (Collins)

• Critical New Literacies include (Leu):

1. identifying important questions
2. locating information
3. critically evaluating information
4. synthesizing information
5. communicating information

[*The definition of wisdom cited above was pulled from Dede's 2009 Educational Research article: Dede, C. (2009). Comments on Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes: Technologies that facilitate generating knowledge and possibly wisdom. Educational Researcher, 38(4): 261-262.]