Eco-Learning Literacy and Art

 At the Literacy Research Association meeting in Arizona, I attended a session on Climate Justice (ecology and literacy). A few weeks later, I am spending time with colleagues Kimberley D'Adamo and Laurie Rich, imagining how we can support educators in fostering processing climate learning through art making. the most visible part of the work is the website Art/Act: Educate. This website includes a collection of artists creating environmental art that is attentive to both local conditions and the overall ecological challenge.

One such artist is the indefatigable Leah Wilson, whose amazing work spans many visual approaches and ecosystems.  We are dreaming of supporting educators (in the broadest sense possible) interested in developing art projects addressing environmental concerns and celebrations. Our goal is to increase environmental awareness and give rise to two generations. The first is a generation of educators who help students process the challenge productively and innovatively. The second is creating a generation of youth better equipped to face environmental concerns through art and a deeper understanding of science and the human impact of the challenge we face as a species.

What should Classrooms look like?

Last week I had the chance to speak at the E N Thompson Forum as a warm up act for the inspiring Milton Chen. I decided to talk about what creativity looks like and can look like in Elementary classrooms. To start off I asked my audience to draw what classrooms should look like. The results (I am attaching examples of work in progress) were very interesting.

What was very clear from the work is that most of the people showing up thought classrooms should look very different than they do now.

The question that occured to me was: if there is a growing concensus that classrooms should be more open and integrated why aren't we trying to do something about it? The example of Pegasus Bay in New Zealand sticks in my mind as an option for new schools but I believe that there is much we can do inside older buildings as well.

I believe that with a bit of ingenuity we can do a lot. It is NOT a replacement for excellent teaching but it provides an environment that encourages teacher and students to learn and teach creatively.

Conferences, Engagement, and Ethics

I am on my way to the American Educational Research Association meeting in San Francisco. This is one area that even the best of current technologies cannot compete with. Despite the best of technology an online conference experience is still far removed from the real deal. In a way its like the idea of a pilgrimage. We need the physical distance and separation to create enough space in our goal system to allow full engagement with the conference. For online conferences to be as successful there is a need to simulate among others that separation.

Figuring this out is not a minor concern, as research and information become globalized we have to travel great distances to present and hear. This limits our ability to interact effectively, engage scholars from less affluent communities and to do so with lower impact on the environment. This important for professional development as well.

I often participate in webinars, hangouts and other digital formats and the expereinec for me is not even close. Mostly I am in my hometown, my office or home and all the daily distractions and goals are still ever present taking away from my engagement and making the experience less satisfactory.

So what can be done, well perhaps the key is creating a blended experience. First scholars and professionals in each of the locations need to be both consumers and producers of presentations. Participants are sequestered during the day in a separate location with peers say a hotel with meeting rooms. Each location can have a moderator and a tech staff making sure that tech problems do not become an obstacle to a good experience. Online informal meeting rooms can be set up for chats. Social can be used just as it is in F2F conferences to help direct traffic and enhance the participant experience.

This version of a virtual conference is considerably less cost effective than a series of webinars or Google plus hangouts- but it would be far more engaging and deeply interactive.
Until then I will enjoy San Francisco seeing old friends and my overpriced hotel room.

Home Literacy Environment in the Digital Age

Recently I have been working on home literacy environment and came across the Home Literacy Environment Questionnaire (HLEQ) by Griffin and Morrison. The measure was designed in 1997 and addresses paper based print only. In only 15 years the measure has become less and less relevant.
This brought me back to an observation that Berliner, perhaps my favorite educational thinker, made in an Educational Researcher piece. His claim was that some social research is very time dependent and has an "expiration date" [my phrase].

The rapid changes in what it means to be literate and the ways literacy plays out in a media rich digital world have made a large variety of research and practice tools irrelevant. Surveys and interviews that are paper centric in reading and writing miss whole potential worlds of engagement that exist parallel to the print world. In today's world access to magazines newspapers and libraries is paralleled to websites, applications and online newsstands.

It also means that publications cycles for research must be shorter if they explore new tools. These tools need to be comprised of modular pieces that can be removed when they become irrelevant and added to as new technologies become relevant.

Some examples can include: Adding to "How many hours of TV watching does your child do daily?"
"how many hours does your child play video games?" "How many hours does your child spend online?"
In addition to "how many books do you have at home?" We could add- How often do you use e-readers/ tablets to access magazines or books?"

I am working on such an instrument right now and will report some results soon!