This is going to be more of a reflective post and no particular episode. There were a lot of technical issues both this morning (with audio) and this afternoon with software. So, in some ways, I feel like I haven't really had a chance to engage in any "thinking" or really even much "observing."
That being said, there were a few things that stuck out to me this morning with the group that I was observing (Group 6: Melanie, Ingrid, and Brian). During the discussion about the Honda Cog video, I couldn't really hear what they were saying. In some ways, I think it made me more consciously aware of all the non-verbal things happening. Each of them had their own laptop and this seemed to make it more difficult when they were trying to discuss with each other since they were not always looking at the same thing. Also, Melanie and Brian interacted much more one-on-one, whereas interactions with Ingrid involved the whole group. This may have been due in part to the fact that Melanie and Brian knew each other and also because they were sitting on one side of the table and Ingrid was on the other side. In fact, at one point, Ingrid actually got up and went around to the other side of the table to see what Melanie had drawn on the whiteboard.
On the whole, this group seemed to be working productively and engaging in interesting dialogue (what I could hear of it). It was fascinating to watch their gestures while only catching snippets of what they were saying, particularly when talking about vibrating and spinning. It reminded me a lot of Hunter's paper/talk on differentiation, especially because I seemed to see the "shaking" gesture that he talks about.
Later in the morning, I could hear better and there was something that stood out to me in both of the small group discussions: about what "unencumbered" conversation looks like and then later, about rights and responsibilities. During the first, this group spent quite a bit of time talking about disasters (9/11, snowstorms, power outages, etc.) and how people interactions between people are different in those situations than in everyday life. During the discussion of rights and responsibilities, I was fascinated by the negotiation of wording for what went on the board. One of them would propose an idea and it seemed clear that they all understood the phenomenon, but there would be discussion (sometimes lengthy) about how to succinctly sum up that phenomenon to put on the board. I may try to pull out a good example of this tomorrow (~11:40), but we'll see.
Mary Bridget, everything you flagged sounds like it would be really interesting. I'm most drawn to the white board interaction you mention - seems like it could be a great example of how what gets assessed (the white board) is often a rather meager representation of the complex discussion that went into creating it.
ReplyDeleteI agree this all sounds like interesting stuff. As someone who hasn't been following what's going on in E1, there was some stuff I was a bit confused about. For example, what's the Honda Cog video? A good note for everybody is to try to write blog posts so that they can be understood by someone who doesn't know what's going on in your class.
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