Transcript Narrative culture in a new context

Narrative Culture in a New Context:
Constructing Collaborative Culture with
ICT in Teacher Education
Sólveig Jakobsdóttir, PhD
associate professor
Þuríður Jóhannsdóttir, M. Ed
project manager
Iceland University of Education (KHÍ)
Iceland
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280.000 people
Area half the size of Minnesota
Native language Icelandic
Midway between Greenland and Norway
ICT in education in Iceland
(ICT = information and communications technology)
• 1992 creation of the Icelandic Educational Network
which connected most Icelandic schools to the
Internet very early compared to other countries
• The innovative practices of the early technology
adopters were rather slow to spread
• However, those practices probably influenced
government and policy makers
• 1996 a national policy was created that called for
effective use of information and communication
technology (ICT) at all levels of schooling.
KHÍ
Iceland University of Education
• 1500 students 2000-2001, now up to 1800
20% increase this fall! (mainly distance learners)
• B.Ed. program run on-campus and Net-based, the
latter program started in 1993
• Graduate program: 93% of over 250 graduate
students are distance learners
• Most of the 100+ staff members teach both on
campus and at a distance
• Through the distance education programs e-mail
was adopted early at the university by most of the
staff
Computer and Internet use:
From isolated experiments....
How have we
tried to facilitate this change?
That is:
• Increase use of ICT in teaching and learning
at KHÍ
• Improve use of ICT in teaching and learning
at KHÍ
E.g. action research study.....
Study
• Study of professional development of teachers and their
integration of ICT in education through case studies and
interviews. Part of European Union funded project – EUN
(European Schoolnet): Research by teacher education
institution in the UK, Iceland, Italy, and Portugal.
• Action research model adopted by Icelandic team with goal
to make successful experiences more visible and promote
ICT within our university through concrete examples and
sharing of experiences. Technology used to strenghten
teachers capacities, skills and knowledge in how to use ICT
in their teaching.
• Stories, narratives collected on database driven web
Theoretical Background:
• Constructing collaborative culture
(Michael Fullan 1999 Change Force. The Sequel)
• Collaborative technology
Kock, N. F. (1999). Process Improvement and Organizational
Learning: The Role of Collaboration Technologies.: Idea Group
Publishing.
• Theories on distributed intelligence/cognition
Pea, Roy D. 1993. Practices of distributed intelligence and
designs for education. Distributed cognitions.
Pshychological and educational considerations
In the spirit of social constructivism
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We look at knowledge as a social construction
We stress the importance of the context to build a meaningful
knowledge
We take advantage of the strenght of storytelling in the
Icelandic culture
We bring in new ideas and new tecnologies – but at the same
time we respect an old tradition
We think that the knowlegde that are constructed within the
institution can be especially useful for
1. Those who participate in it
2. Other teachers at KHÍ
3. Icelandic university teachers in general or those being in similar
cultural situation –
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We are constructing a situated knowledge
Using Information technology to
construct collaborative knowlegde
• The importance of constructing collaborative
knowledge and using the most powerful tools
available in the culture especially in times when
changes are fast
• Using the tools of ICT to help us gather knowledge
otherwise tacit
• Using ICT to classify and help to analyse the stories
• Using ICT to present the result on an open web-site
• The ICT-tools in that way serving the teacers in their
own quest for new knowledge
Why narratives ?
• The Icelandic culture builds on an old heritage of
sagas
• Norwegian settlers brought with them the Nordic
mythology in form of oral stories back in the 9th
century
• Icelanders kept them alive by storytelling until
Icelandic writers wrote them down in 12th - 13th
century along with the famous Icelandic sagas.
• We are proud of this heritage and still enjoy good
narratives and storytelling.
Sagas of Eirik the red and Leif Eiriksson:
Travelled West from Iceland to Vínland
via Greenland at the end of the first
millennium
Picture from http://www.fva.is/vinland/kort/eiriksstadir.html
Story-telling in KHÍ
• A narrative culture is also strong within our
institution and we enjoy many good story-tellers in
social and professional activities.
• By taking advantage of the strenght of storytelling
in the Icelandic culture we tried to meet people
were they were on a known and safe ground.
• We wanted to bring in new ideas and new
technologies – but at the same time respect an old
tradition.
• New international research on language
developement show that Icelanders are strong
story-tellers while they are not so good in e.g.
writing expository texts or ananlytical texts.
Tale of Palli “Silfertail”
(travelled east from US to Iceland at the
end of the second millenium)
The process of our analyses,
interpretation and presentation ?
• Analysis in EUN context – Sólveig
• Presentation on the European Schoolnet
http://www.khi.is/~soljak/eunwp165/ /
• Analysis in KHÍ context – Þuríður (M.Ed. Thesis)
• Presentation:
– workshop for teachers in KHÍ
– An Icelandic conference on ICT 2001
– A web-site - Net-teaching – scaffolding for the teacher
staff at KHÍ http://ust.khi.is/netkennsla
Course tools and conference
systems we have been using
• Conference systems + web editors (component
applications):
– From 1998 - Webboard
– 2000-2001 an increasing use of Webboard along with
web-sites (open or closed). Most teachers use the
FrontPage editor
• Course tools (integrated applications):
– 1998 Web course in a Box ( + a “home made” program)
– 1999-2000 Learning space
– 2000-2001 Web CT
How did the use of ICT affect the teaching ?
The interpretation of the narratives
• We were interested to see how the teachers used the
affordances of the Internet in their teaching and research
• One way of interpretation was using this four categories or
questions:
– How are teachers using:
• Internet´s easy access to information and knowledge for themselves
and their students ?
• the possibilties Internet affords to communication and connection
making ?
• Internet as a easy and cheap way to publish their own and their
student´s material ?
• taking advantage of the Internet as an international medium ?
Access to information
• Lilja Jónsdóttir, assistant professor, instructional
methods:
– I look at the Internet as an important addition to other
resources which my students can use, both at the
primary school level and in the teacher education
program. I expect my students to look for information
on the Internet as well as in books or in traditional
ways.
Access to information
• Another teacher stresses the advantages of
diversity and multi-vocality on the Internet
compared to one dominant voice of the
traditional course book which seems to be on
its way out.
• A typical development (?):
– Ingvar Sigurgeirsson, professor, curriculum and
instruction: When the course book we had used was
sold out we decided to give up the use of course books
and instead use more diverse resources, handbooks,
articles, chapters of books and especially web-materials
of different kinds.
Communication
• The importance of human communication in
learning – an increased stress on learning to
participate in the discourse of the subject ?
• The lack of discussion tradition in Iceland
problematic
– Gunnhildur Óskarsdóttir, assistant professor, instructional methods:
I thougt that some students were not at all taking active part in the
discussion and I would like to control that part better next time,
making clearer rules about how to take part in discussion. I would
even like to make it part of the course assessment. Some students
did only participate in social chat while others really were more
professional pointing out and asking for things that matters in
academic discussion.
Publishing teaching material on
the Internet – a good model
• Thorunn Blondal, assistant professor, Icelandic and linguistics:
– I sent in (in LearningSpace) subject for discussion which I
expected my students to respond to and discuss;
– I wrote notes or letters or articles which were part or extention of
the reading material;
– I made them write notes and respond to one another;
– I published presentations (Powerpoint) and annotations regarding
the material;
– I published a video with a new TV- program that was directly
connected to our discussion;
– I planned a workshop on Icelandic language policy where I dealt
out discussion subjects for 6 groups and each group should send an
article to which the others could respond and all this was supposed
to happen as close to real time as possible.
Publishing teaching material
other than texts
• Slow evolution
– The music teacher publishes melodies
• http://www.ismennt.is/not/sigpalm/
– The biology teacher publishes photos and
drawings
– Some teachers are using PowerPoint with
narration
Internet for international
communication
• Discussions between international groups at
fora e.g. European schoolnet
• To get any participation: have to be
moderated to some degree, organised at
certain times, certain groups (e.g. graduate
students with their teachers)
“Banks” to share work
Use of database connected webs (e.g. Frontpage
Access)/”banks” to publish:
• Concept definitions
• Information about software and experience,
software evaluation
• Information about interesting reading materials
(“annotated bibliographies” and references)
• Research findings, e.g. qualitative descriptions on
Internet use
• Information and evaluation of children’s literature
Barnung – a web on children’s
literature – Þuríður
• Effort is being made to build up a rich educational
environment in Icelandic, but is simultaneously intended to
provide general information about children´s and young
people´s literature for teachers, students and even parents.
• Site continuously growing by contributions of students and
teachers at the University of Education
• Joint working area where schools and Iceland University
of Education will be able to build up a body of knowledge
in the field of children´s literature.
• Url: http://barnung.khi.is
Designing learning environment
in the spirit of social constructivism
• the learning task is to collaboratively construct
knowledge
• hypothesis:
– important for students (teachers) to participate in
knowledge construction
– a web with subject-related material will enhance
“enculturation” of students into the field (situated
learning theories) and their professional development
hypothesis …
– important for students (teachers) to choose their
own learning paths (differentiation)
– important to enhance a school-culture on the
Internet by stressing meaningful interaction and
cooperation
– ideology of the social constructivism applies
well to the Internet
– See http://barnung.khi.is
Spring 2001
The developement continues
• Inrerest in publishing students work increases
– Motivation for the students
– Making their work visible outside the university
– Making schoolwork useful – meaningful in social
context
– Giving students the feeling that they participate in
social construction of knowledge in their field
– Students feel they are preparing for their job as
schoolteacers by publishing their materials
Publishing student´s material:
examples from history education
• students collect primary resources and
publish it on the Internet
http://saga.khi.is/torf
• students publish teaching material for
primary school students
– A new method in history teaching presented in
a new creative way on the Internet
Current situation – future ?
• More teachers gain Internet literacy
• Have their own home-page
• Make web-sites for their courses alone or in
collaboration with other teacers
• Use conference systems and course tools in their
distance teaching
• Still need support - technically and coucelling
about how to teach in this new environment of the
Internet
• We continue to use ICT to support them on both
frontiers hopefully