Our conversation was good prep for Dr. T’s fresh perspective on Yo Yo Ma’s “Silk Road Ensemble” and the dimensions of learning in that project. I was struck by the concept that a body of knowledge is unknowingly privileged by particular voices. Dr. T. showed us how threads of perception of the same event in historical images provide different knowledge about that event, and how students can be engaged in discovering, in a digital community, these different types of knowledge. She showed us the project “Perry Visits Japan.”
Dr. T focused on the hybrid of cognitive and sensory frameworks to transform comprehensive and critical analysis, and how these come to define “signature” pedagogies, such as “grand rounds” in medical teaching.
As I write these notes a day later, two teachers across the hallway are discussing spiritual understanding and personality in the teaching process. This is not unlike the concept that Dr. T. mentioned of designing “open-room for debate and interpretations” into the assignments that we create for students. She reflected on the challenge for many teachers of planning inquiry with open-ended studies and absence of conclusions into a study process.
In this context, layering communities and voices into portals of engagement led to the creation of “research teams” whose members came from different countries, who were provided with real data about a pervasive real-world health problem, and were invited to decide what to do with the data. This approach was much less prescriptive than many learning assignments. The teams had to
decide what was important to them in their personal lives, what they care about most, and then could proceed with deciding what to do about the data.
Dr. T. described the distance learning design-studio concept. She added questions about what to visualize from what perspective? What to scaffold? How to develop productive habits of mind? Reflection on McLuhan’s (1961) The Gutenberg Galaxy notion of extending our senses outside of us with the social world, and how this is like what happens when a new note is added to a melody. And what biases do we bring to the curriculum?
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Kathy Takayama
Dr. T focused on the hybrid of cognitive and sensory frameworks to transform comprehensive and critical analysis, and how these come to define “signature” pedagogies, such as “grand rounds” in medical teaching.
As I write these notes a day later, two teachers across the hallway are discussing spiritual understanding and personality in the teaching process. This is not unlike the concept that Dr. T. mentioned of designing “open-room for debate and interpretations” into the assignments that we create for students. She reflected on the challenge for many teachers of planning inquiry with open-ended studies and absence of conclusions into a study process.
In this context, layering communities and voices into portals of engagement led to the creation of “research teams” whose members came from different countries, who were provided with real data about a pervasive real-world health problem, and were invited to decide what to do with the data. This approach was much less prescriptive than many learning assignments. The teams had to
decide what was important to them in their personal lives, what they care about most, and then could proceed with deciding what to do about the data.
Dr. T. described the distance learning design-studio concept. She added questions about what to visualize from what perspective? What to scaffold? How to develop productive habits of mind? Reflection on McLuhan’s (1961) The Gutenberg Galaxy notion of extending our senses outside of us with the social world, and how this is like what happens when a new note is added to a melody. And what biases do we bring to the curriculum?
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Kathy Takayama
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