When students are asked to represent a scenario in ET and then on a whiteboard, they have an opportunity for representational innovation -- showing something in a new way on the whiteboard. A storyboard is one common representational innovation. Let's look at some examples of whiteboard innovation and think about how they came about.
The setting is UE2, table 2, Thursday morning. The energy theater was performed on the previous day. The relevant files are:
a. energy theater: Movies > UE2 120627 1534 T2&ET
b. creation of whiteboard: Movies > UE2 120628 1038 T2
c. whiteboard: Photos > UE2 120628 WB T2 AM
In (b), the students create a whiteboard about heat energy diffusing out of a coffee cup. Notice that the suggestion to storyboard comes from Wendy. Wendy draws by herself in her notebook from 55:25 to 56:00, paying little attention to her groupmates' activities. (Although the notebook is hidden, you can see that she draws a circle at one point, and moves her hand in a way that is inconsistent with writing sentences but might be consistent with drawing a diagram.) Then she says:
Wendy: We need a (?) how we started.
Adria: You gotta help me out here, I'm just drawing.
Wendy: (I was thinking?) maybe a two-stage drawing. How it, where it, how it started.
Adria: Okay.
Wendy: Like we just talked about snapshots.*
Adria: Okay. (The suggestion is carried out.)
(* Possibly she is referring to the previous day, when Tim said the word "snapshot" during energy theater while recruiting her for a demonstration, at 27:25 on movie UE 2 120627 1534 T2&ET. That's the most recent use of the word I can find.)
At a later point in the conversation, starting at 59:50, it is decided that thermal energy outside the cup will be marked with arrows, to indicate that it is moving outward.
Wendy: You want to show those T's, they kinda (moves hand)
Joan: Like give them an arrow?
Wendy: Show that they keep moving (moves hand) away from the cup.
Joan: Yeah. Why don't you put it in there.
Adria: You know what you (?) in mind. (Offers the pen to Wendy)
Wendy: Like this. (Shows them her notebook.)
In both cases, Wendy seems to be working out the innovation for herself, using her notebook, before giving it to the group. I like to view representational innovation as providing evidence of understanding, but in this case, do we have evidence of everyone understanding equally, or is Wendy likely to understand more because she is the innovator? (My previous post about storyboarding is an example of the same issue; and I have a third example from Wednesday's UE 1 group 4, which I would like to post later.)
Josh, I've seen lots of different ways of representing dynamic, time-evolving energy processes on whiteboards. Some teachers (and myself) choose to use arrows to 'track' energy as it moves through a system. Others choose to make a sequence of snapshots that show the energy at particular, key moments. I think that's probably what Wendy meant, especially because that's how the teachers were representing things when they did Energy Theater the day before.
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