the starfish story

the starfish story, aka Sara and the Starfish, was an adaptation of Loren Eiseley’s work. an adaptation via goodreads.com is as follows:

“Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”

“I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” asked the somewhat startled wise man.

To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, “But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”

At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said,

“It made a difference for that one.”

160511-starfish_David Quitoriano
(photo credit: David Quitoriano)

cooperative resources preparation – afterthought

昨天的Studio课我们迎来了两位“插班生”——振南师&凤儿师。下午茶叙我们围坐时就聊到教师如果独自备课工作量太繁重的问题。因为华文老师一般得为许多进度作准备。凤儿师分享道小学老师有50-60个人在一起的一个组织,如何为小学每一课课文准备最基本的教案、ppt和相关资源。振南师则分享道某校部门主任如何组织老师在某学年集中火力准备某年级某进度的类似的教学资源的工作。

当时脑海浮现一些思绪但却说不到点上。今早再想了想,我想我当时的responses应如下:

1. Resources are important component for lessons – must have, and therefore must be prepared.
2. Cooperative resource preparation is good because it allows concerted effort for teachers to focus while divide-and-conquering (1).

联系我们茶叙前在聊的话题种种,我觉得关键是:

3. What is the purpose of the resources prepared/gathered? Are these for teachers’ lesson delivery (“”为出发点;灌输为主——非常有效率地教), or are these for students’ meaning-making (“”为出发点)?

这两个不同的出发点对所准备的resources作为“outcomes”会有哪些影响呢? 资源(例如文章、范文、videos)或许有共通的,但是如何使用会因目的不同而不同。换句话说,两者的教案就肯定不一样了。

另外,”resource preparation”一词很大成分意味着资源是出自教师。“资源”可否来自学生?为什么可以?为什么不可以?因为这样很没效率?因为学生找不到“对”的资源(cf. 教师准备的对错拿捏妥当)?

所以回过头来,我觉得还是离不开“学习”这根本问题s——What is learning? How does learning take place? 不同的技能、课题可能学习的方法不同。所以没有划一的答案。

但思考的出发点应该只有一个,
就是“” (cf. 教)。

triangular windows
(photo credit: Michael Coghlan)

time is like liquid in a bottle

time is like liquid in a bottle.
liquid is not too compressible (cf. air).
if a bottle is already filled with Coke to the brim, there’s no layman way to introduce (choose any favourite drink, e.g. Pepsi, 100-Plus, Kickapoo, 佳佳凉茶, whatever)

coke_full_bottle
(source/acknowledgement: thedieline.com)

to introduce (insert favourite drink) into the bottle, some Coke must give way.
to introduce new practice into any teaching and learning context, some old practice must give way.

time is like liquid.
time is incompressible, and limited.

ict lesson, a problematic conception

“ict lesson”, or “ICT教学”,这样的一个名词, such a conception, is problematic.

if we have “ICT教学”,与之相对的是什么?“非ICT教学”?

如果ICT的使用可以随时”开”或”关”, 这或许就是为什么学校里还存在one-off设计ICT活动的现象了。

“ICT教学”, and “ict lesson”这个名词应该去除。停止使用,不再使用

理由很简单,21世纪的生活已脱离不开科技。要预备学生在未来的生活中不断自主学习,运用ICT学习的习惯和技能必须养成(这其实连带学生“如何学”的问题 (cf.教师如何教))。习惯的养成不是一朝一夕的事;技能更是多样,更需要长时间指导磨练。

要达到培养学生习惯、磨练学生技能的学习目的,任何教学都要从TPACK角度去思考。那么学生的学习照顾到了,教师也从此不再陷入one-off、ICT可有可无的问题。

clock time photo

acknowledgement: Alexas Fotos

facilitator’s log (12541 primary)

last friday, we held our first session of ICT for SDL and CoL Clinic for primary school teachers (TRAISI code: 12541, or 12541-00003). as the traisi code suggested, this is the 3rd round of primary clinic. the first round was facilitated by dear wu jing cher, and the second round was facilitated by me when wj left for her full-time studies.

this 3rd round of primary clinic returns me to a dual-facilitator role – to facilitate the learning of both teachers who signed up for the course, and the instructor of the course (Wen Yun who joined us to take up the position vacated by WJ). unlike the previous round of handholding, WY is expected to conduct this course without a chance to ‘witness’ nor much time to co-construct the (ideal) conceptions of the course.

as a reminder to self, this blended learning course is designed in attempt to work towards 2 ideals: 1. to find a new approach towards CL teachers’ PD (tying short-term courses, with a larger CoP in the long run); 2. to be a student-centered course situated within a social constructivist paradigm, where learning is facilitated through discourse (both f2f & online).

to facilitate our further conversation, in this log, i would like to capture some observations and thoughts. the ‘source’ of these ideas came from our conversations prior and after the f2f session, and observations during the f2f session).

  • “我是传统的师范毕业生。”
  • – this line came up i think at least 2 or 3 times during our conversations. i am not sure if WY realised she had emphasised this idea many times, but my guess is this is a reflection of an internal struggle with theoretical understanding, and existing practices in teaching. “传统” & “师范” connote a teacher-centered, teacher talk-dominated, learning = passive copying and listening type of teaching. the source of internal struggle probably came from (1) her deep understanding of CSCL principles based on her phd studies, (2) the ideal #2 of this course that demand (1) to be put into practice. this is perhaps a reflection of the saying ‘expoused beliefs is one thing; actual actions is another’.

  • “my beliefs about learning have changed, but i may have difficulty putting it into practice” (approximation, can’t recall exact words)
  • – yes, what i thought of when i heard this is “if action is powered by beliefs, actions thus reflect our beliefs”. if we are unable to do certain thing, is it that our beliefs have not changed to the extent we thought it would have changed? change in beliefs over time will be something useful to track (researcher’s talk) 😛

  • “我从来没有感觉上课那么没底儿。”
  • – what does “底” mean? my guess is fixed structure coupled with fixed load of contents to talk about and pushed into the black boxes of the participants? clinic has a course structure, so structure is not the issue. so we are left with the contents part. following the student-cantered ideal, we will be facilitating discussions and learning in ideas that participants would raise in the course of our interactions. this is really the most unsettling feeling that i get based on my personal experience. some qns that have ever passed through my mind include,

    “what if there’s things that i cannot answer?”;
    “what if participants think badly about this ‘teacher’ who doesn’t appear to know anything becos s/he doesn’t spoon-feed us the textbook defns, and provide us with loads of contents and resources?”;
    “what if there are important ‘learning’ to be taken away but the idea doesn’t surface from the participants at all?”

    for the 1st qn, i convinced myself that no one can truly know everything, but it’s important that we are willing to go and find out things that we don’t know, and know how to go abt finding out what that we needs to find out. and this is an important lesson about ‘learning’ that i want my participants to takeaway, if they takeaway; and i do this by modelling the behaviours (it’s OK to say i don’t know; i demonstrate how i go about finding out abt new things; i demonstrate that learning takes TIME, a forgotten or simply ignored fact in the production mode that we conduct teaching in schools (too little time, too many things to be taught and assessed. 填鸭填鸭再填鸭; stuff, stuff, stuff)

    for the 2nd qn, this is the greatest ‘risk’ that we have to take, especially if participants possess naive personal epistemology, and deeply entrenched in a content-cum-resource loaded expectation of ‘learning’. Victor mentioned he had his fair share of such experience, cos we all need to face the ‘reality’ of SFT. based on my experience so far, i just have to hold on to my beliefs and ideals, and trust that teachers will be able to see and appreciate it at the end of the day. if there are some starfish that i couldn’t move this time, it’s just not enough time i have to engage them. learning takes time; changing of beliefs take even more time i believe (and i think we can find literature to support this, which i haven’t really done so, yet.)

    for the 3rd qn, over the past 3 secondary clinic and 1 primary clinic that i have facilitated, i am not so worried about this anymore. cos if the issue is so important (for e.g., conception of ‘affordance’, TPACK), we will be able to make links to it one way or another. probably that’s why as teachers, we always say teaching is a science, but is also an art. weaving is the ‘art’ part.

below is a record of things that i caught my attention (incl. being shown, being said):

– defining what is ‘e-learning’, and relate it to MOOC
– “ICT=vitamin是相对主流的用法。”
– “这些原则(ref to the 4 interaction guidelines)你的学生也可以用。”
– “我们可以聚焦一些课题来讨论。” (this is not suggested by WY)

a few other notes:
– too little time is left to go through the details of the activities, and check for understanding that participants know what to do where to do when to do what
– there’s a rich repertoire of ideas surfaced by participants that i would use to build on. use them to raise questions to keep them thinking, no answers’ required there and then.

that’s all for now (: