I’m working on the syllabus for the m-learning course that I’m teaching this Spring. Since the course is an elective for everyone in it and we will have a small class, I have been debating the best way to structure the course. I’ve decided that we will, as a group, take the first session to plan out our semester.
Girls using XO Laptop in South America
I’m very pleased that my paper for AERA 2012 has been accepted. The paper with the (working – see below) title, To know is not important: Ivan Illich and Jacques Rancière’s relational pedagogy, looks at how the writing of Illich and Rancière challenges one of our must fundamental understandings of education: the centrality of the acquisition of new knowledge. Most theories of education squarely place knowledge acquisition — whether a “banking model”, situated cognition, or critical approach — at the center of an educational project. This unchallenged assumption implicitly underlies the AERA 2012 theme, “Non Satis Scire: To Know Is Not Enough.”
Illich and Rancière challenge us to take a step back, seeing education primarily as a way to structure of social relationships, power, politics, and democracy. As I develop the full paper, I’m looking forward to exploring the different strategies and epistemology forwarded by the two authors. One reviewer blasted me for drawing “pedagogy” as a theme for the paper, indicating that it is an un-Illichean approach. I’m also looking forward to considering the implications of this critique and digging deeper into Illich’s work. (thank you unknown reviewer)
In other research news, since my paper was accepted, I will also be the discussant on an interesting games in learning symposium, featuring research from my colleagues at Teachers College: Exploring Influences of Game Types and Design Decisions: Issues of Learning, Interaction and On/Offline Boundaries.
As the new Program in Educational Technology gets underway, I’m refining and organizing the syllabi for the courses. When they are ready, I’m going to post all course syllabi here, so that other people can inspect them, use them, comment, critique, and hopefully find them useful in some way.
The first one I’m posting is for a course that I’m teaching as a special topics, but will be an elective in the new program: Video games and learning. This semester, it’s kind of a soft launch for the program, testing out many things:
Without further ado, here are the links to the course syllabus:
Earlier this week we received word from the NYS Dept. of Education that our programs in Educational Technology have officially been approved. This means that we can start accepting applications from students and add program information to the university website. Expect both to happen in the next week or two.
The State approved:
Wednesday, October 12, 2:30PM @ The Adelphi Manhattan Center, Room 263
I’m very excited to host a talk by Mike Neary and Joss Winn who are in town this week for the Mobility Shifts conference.
Professors Neary and Winn talk about their Student as Producer project, which seeks to connect undergraduate teaching and learning and academic research so that students become part of the academic project of the university: as producers of knowledge and meaning. They will discuss the intellectual ideas that lie behind the concept of Student as Producer, and how that idea is being developed across the sector and at the University of Lincoln. The theoretical basis is derived from critical social theory grounded in avant-garde Marxism that developed in the first half of the twentieth century. A key issue for Student as Producer is that social learning is more than individual learning in a social context, and includes the way in which the social context itself is transformed through progressive pedagogic practice.
Join us:
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 2:30 p.m.
Adelphi University Manhattan Center, room 263
75 Varick Street, Second Floor
New York, NY 10013