Spring 2002
A Discussion by Joe Bustillos and Christine Lorenz
“The goal of this chapter is to construct an integrated approach to collaboration and conceptual change.”
That’s a large goal to be making, but the author means to pull us into seeing the process of learning and “conceptual change” through the process of collaborative exploration. Through much of the body of the chapter the author observes two students, Carol and Dana, as they:
“cooperatively constructed an understanding of acceleration that constituted a large conceptual change from their previous concept, a qualitative approximations, to the scientific meaning of acceleration, and a closely shared meaning among the two students” Thus, as part of the experimentation process, through dialogue, verbal assessment, checking and rechecking with each other, the two girls arrive at a changed understanding of, in this case, the scientific understanding of “Acceleration.”
Sissy and I (with Henry, Vicky and Michelle) went through this process recently when we worked on our 634 video project. Sissy’s original idea was to stage a Furby Autopsy inspired by our reading of Mark Pesce’s “The Playful World” and in the spirit of the “Alien Autopsy” video released several years ago. The idea was rekindled and resurrected with this term’s video assignment. The question was how to make it fit the assignment’s requirements.
In order to facilitate our script discussions in TI (TappedIn chat), I created a webpage with a demo-script (click here to go to the first script). In TI, however, Michelle had a hard time seeing how the proposed script fit with the assignment or message. Granted, I had written it, mostly with an anti-tech message and because we had a furby.
Sissy behind the wheel
Some of that TI session follows:
MichelleC says, “I like the overall idea, but I think the message is a little ‘off'”
ChristineML says, “ok, let’s work on the message then”
HenryP asks, “what is the message?”
ChristineML says, “he did a great job with it”
HenryP exclaims, “i did look at it, is that what we’re doing? I like it!”
ChristineML says, “i like it too hen”
ChristineML says, “it was really good”
JosephBB [to Michelle]: “what about the “message” should we tweak?”
ChristineML says, “it’s not the technology that makes us alive….it’s LIFE”
MichelleC says, “the last words of Evil Doc seem off. I mean, we’re trying to advocate it as a tool not a toy, and trying to warn against over/mis use of tech, but I don’t think the furby works for that message.”
MichelleC says, “I think the furby and the message are a little mismatched here.”
ChristineML says, “i think it does if you return the toy to a little kid and she stops playing with her puppy or something”
JosephBB says, “okay, my idea was that these people are so taken, believing that the damn thing is alive that they’ll do an autopsy on a doll to figure out what wrong”
ChristineML says, “if the child chooses the toy over the real thing”
HenryP says, “stops playing with another kid even”
ChristineML says, “i understand your message joe, and i understand mich’s point too”
ChristineML says, “maybe we tweak it by including that message……”
ChristineML says, “a kid freaks out because her furby stopz working”
ChristineML says, “takes it to the doctor”
HenryP says, “i like”
ChristineML says, “while puppy’s water dish is empty”
JosephBB says, “hmmmmm”
ChristineML says, “and it poops in the house”
HenryP says, “yesyesyes”
HenryP says, “lol”
ChristineML says, “we could use my dog as the actor…he is a real ham”
MichelleC says, “So… the msg is that tech is not an ideal learning environment? because the PSA idea was for teaching in general.”
JosephBB says, “ok, but because it’s a kid, it’s less “ridiculous,” ’cause kids are allowed to believe in doll, adults should know better”
MichelleC says, “Linda suggested the PSA to be something that changed the image of teaching.”
ChristineML says, “no i don’t think we are saying that it isn’t an ideal learning environment, but that it shouldn’t replace real life experience”
JosephBB [to Mich]: “good point”
After that discussion I wrote a second script that highlighted how the specialists worked together this time to “save” the Furby, a more gentle PC version of the first script (click here to see script two). Fortunately, on the day of filming, Sissy spoke up and the second script disappeared to be replaced by a third version that both showed the researchers working together AND a message on too much technology-dependency: FRP: Furby Research Project.
Granted, this example is not exactly like working together to discover the properties of light, but we quite literally worked together to create a video product from our changing vision for this project. And because we worked so well together we had time set-up for the video we really wanted to do. JBB
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