Many thanks to Crystal Land and the team who arranged a second visit from Ewan McIntosh. Ewan held "office hours" for us, and many HRS employees got to meet with him. Here are a few thoughts that came out of the sessions. Thanks also go out to all those who took the time to visit office hours and do a write-up of their ideas!
Naoko said....
I enjoyed chatting with
Ewan about two ideas - one was a setting up a calculus twitter (which I will let Shahana, my collaborator, explain.) The other idea I brought to him is one I'm tackling as the person overseeing the Service Learning program in the Upper School. For some years now, the Action Plan has posed some challenges - both for students and for their faculty advisors. While I love - and intend to keep - the spirit of the Action Plan (this idea of having the students have some understanding and context about a social issue/need - and then committing to a community agency for a period of two years) - there have been a number of challenges.
I thought I'd see what
Ewan would suggest - both about how to scaffold the process of creating a new Action Plan that better fits the US - and - ideas for creating a storehouse for action plans, reflections and community service opportunities. We both agreed that inviting a group of students to work at the problem was a good first step. And I'm developing an online, perhaps web? perhaps portal?, way for students and advisers to keep written/video reflections of their service work.
Shahana's Twitter account...
Our goal: to give you insight into our classroom. To provide you with dinner table conversation. To perhaps start discussions that otherwise might not happen.
Your job: follow, if you wish:
http://twitter.com/DNEorDoesIt ; or @DNEorDoesIt. Then...reply, if you wish. And most definitely let us know if there is something you would like to know more about, or know about specifically.
Note: DNEorDoesIt also exists on Facebook - it will echo what is posted on twitter, if you prefer that network.
Willie said...
Ewan and I discussed the benefits and challenges of creating media
outlets like radio and television for students and faculty. I'm
designing and creating a radio station "KHRS" that will broadcast both
live events as well as podcasts. My dream has always been to combine
my passions for radio and education and
Ewan helped me see that it's
very simple and easy to do. My goal is to have the official launch of
"KHRS" in Jan when we return from winter break.
Andy Spear said...
Some great ideas flowing. A quick synopsis: I first showed him a blog I've created for my class, which he inspired -- I had the idea while we were working with him in August. (
http://shortstory.posterous.com/) But the real meat was when we started talking about two other things -- first, the website we're building for the school newspaper, which led to a conversation about about sustaining attention in today's world (not attention span, but how to make something like a school paper consistently interesting to the community, and a site relevant enough to become important to people here). That led to talk about cross-pollination --
Ewan has a slide that breaks down the 'spaces' we inhabit (primarily the digital spaces), and posits that in order to retain attention, if that's your goal, you need to inhabit at least three spaces; that means, for example, that a newspaper can inhabit a 'publishing' space (the website itself), but if it can add a 'private/personal' space (a text update sent to your mobile phone when there's some sort of news), and then maybe a 'group' space as well (Facebook, for example) via status updates in sites of that nature. Provocative in terms of thinking broadly about communication in this media-saturated age, but also specifically relevant to my work with the kids on the newspaper as we strive to construct a website that will be exciting, engaging, and relevant.
And the second piece also drew on the 'spaces' slide, and a side observation
Ewan made, which was that kids today have very few spaces where they are not being asked to be themselves -- we ask them to be sincerely themselves almost everywhere they go. Kids crave 'performative' spaces, he suggests (and always have) -- and get them in very few places. Video games, he posits, are one -- drama class is another (for a few kids). I teach drama, and the link between the two intrigues me. With a huge drama class this year, it will be tough to find individual performance opportunities -- but I'm now investigating the way video games might be used in drama (on a limited basis). I'm not a big advocate of video games in general (
Ewan certainly is, and he linked me to his many blog posts on the topic), but I'm going to challenge myself to investigate this avenue.
Holly said...
While chatting with
Ewan at lunch time, he wanted to know what larger problems we need to tackle as a community, and the conversation turned to communications and the difficulty of keeping all members informed of larger events and issues as well as daily details. (I had to run to class and didn't get to hear all the helpful ideas
Ewan might have had for us. I hope we can find solutions.)
