Tag Archives: Participatory Learning and You

Plates

  By laurelfelt | January 24, 2012 - 10:39 pm | , , , ,
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Lately I’ve been saying, “I’ve got a lot on my plate.” When I want to switch it up, I disclose the more colorful, “I’m trying to keep multiple plates spinning.” But I’ve been thinking (always dangerous), This paints plates* too reductively. Plates aren’t disembodied, external objects; they don’t merely host gorge-inducing portions or demand frantic maintenance. Plates define our very foundation. We’re built on plates. If living in Los Angeles has taught me nothing else, it’s that our wellbeing depends on the stability, balance, and flow of these plates.

So what’s on my professional plate? Very glad you asked… I’ve enabled comments so that anyone who’s interested can discuss a project with me — this post is mostly meant to inform and engage, and only minimally to vent. Thus, in no particular order:

-co-writing/editing a $1.35M grant to the National Science Foundation
-co-writing an article for journal Learning, Media and Technology on Explore Locally, Excel Digitally, an after-school program my colleagues and I designed and instructed during Spring 2011
-final edits + table layout for Sunukaddu chapter in African Childhoods: Survival, Education and Peace-building in the Youngest Continent
-co-designing challenges for PLAY! platform (which my colleagues and I will present at the Digital Media & Learning Conference and the Annenberg Innovation Lab Festival)
-considering user interface, affordances, and embedded biases of PLAY! platform with colleagues
-brainstorming ideas for Dojo, continuing to meet with folks and think through my dissertation plan, and designing presentation to GameDesk
-writing dissertation prospectus
-co-writing case study about Summer Sandbox and Playing Outside the Box for eBook on participatory models of professional development
-co-facilitating the USC Serious Games Network and co-developing outline for panel I will moderate on serious games’ business models, hosted by USC Marshall School of Business, with panelists Laird Malamed & George Rose
-analyzing data from Laughter for a Change with RFK-LA, a weekly after-school improv workshop with high school freshmen which I participant-observed during Fall 2011, and making a presentation for the Digital Media & Learning conference
-participating on a panel addressing Henry Jenkins‘s Convergence Culture
-revising NCA conference paper on grassroots epistemologies for submission to a scholarly journal and for a chapter in Global Health Communication Strategies in the 21st Century
-attending a gala for the Khmer Anti-Poverty Party, whose membership I’ve instructed in leadership strategies
-writing five letters of recommendation for last semester’s students
-considering a possible joint paper on The Hunger Games
-attending various meetings and workshops
-leafing through stacks of library books and recent Amazon purchases + blogs and articles
-taking on the serious/fun business of playing serious games

Now what’s for dessert?

*My mom paints plates too! You should see her bowl for Rosh Hashanah honey — it’s a beaut!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

  By laurelfelt | September 9, 2011 - 10:39 am | ,
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Cross-cultural Workshops in Participatory Learning

From my own living room to Mumbai’s World Trade Center, from a conference of international scholars to a series of hands-on workshops with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teachers, Summer 2011 tackled the themes of participatory learning and digital youth from multiple angles.

My summer was book-ended with my qualifying examinations (writing from May 13-May 23, defending on August 25). My areas of scholarship examined the theoretical elements and associated practices required for productive educational interventions: participation and play; narrative; empathy; and positive deviance.

Immediately upon finishing my papers, I jetted to Boston for the 61st Annual International Communication Association Annual Conference. Highlights included participating in the intellectually stimulating, networking-rich preconference “Media, child health, and wellbeing: Setting the research agenda,” supporting the elevation of the Children, Adolescents, and the Media Special Interest Group to Division status, and interacting with the diverse attendees — junior and senior scholars, industry professionals, domestic and foreign, from big cities and small towns.

I also had the opportunity to live in Mumbai, India, for a month, co-teaching the hands-on, inquiry-rich Expanding Minds Program. In the morning, five- to seven-year-olds and, in the afternoon, seven- to nine-year-olds engaged with peers and open-ended materials to play, think, and build. Each week’s participants investigated a different theme: ancient art; toy engineering; and the science of flight. We documented students’ learning and engaged in lively discussions about the relative value of process vs. product. Cultural similarities and differences were also a site of discovery and reflection.

For a month, I also worked on Project New Media Literacy’s/Participatory Learning and You!’s Summer Sandbox. Our central goal is identifying and creating educational practices that will prepare teachers and students to become full and active participants in the new digital culture. I co-taught two week-long sessions in participatory learning, introducing LAUSD teachers to: the meaning of participatory culture; the characteristics of participatory learning; means of incorporating tools and toys as inspiration and bridges into lesson-planning and learning experiences; various ways to encounter and master technology; and specific technologies conducive to participatory learning. We gathered data via fieldnotes, participants’ products, and video documentation, and will continue to work with certain teachers during the school year.

Throughout the summer, I also submitted drafts of a book chapter entitled “Our Voice: Public Health and Youths’ Communication for Social Change in Senegal,” which will be published in forthcoming volume African Childhoods: Survival, Education, and Peace-building in the Youngest Continent. This chapter explains the educational intervention/research I conducted last summer in Dakar, Senegal.

I blogged about my experiences at laurelfelt.org/blog. Comments welcome!

Timing

  By laurelfelt | August 10, 2011 - 10:44 pm | , , ,
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The clock and the calendar.

Are they the toughs, the bruiser henchmen, harassing on behalf of Big Bossman Life? Are they the It Couple, dominating our reality, occupying our fantasy, engaging our discourse? Do they deserve to be less — the lighting fixtures that came with the apartment? Simply the horsepower that each engine’s got?

At 1:55 am, Mom texted from Ireland that she and Dad could feel their 6-hour jetlag. 6 am, snooze. 6:09, snooze. 6:14… At 6:37 am, Vanessa texted that if she arrived after 7:30 am, I should ask Jackie for the keys. At 7:55 am, only three teachers had arrived. We started at 8:19 am, even though we’d planned to begin at 8. We decided at 10 am, which had been the session’s original stopping point, that we should continue until noon. At noon, Vanessa announced that our lunch break would be 30 minutes (originally 60 minutes, reduced at our 10 am powwow to 45, so where had she gotten 30?). After 40 minutes had passed, we decided to give it 60. The next activity took 15 minutes to explain — an unforeseen expenditure — and participants were to complete the bulk of the activity in 35 minutes, then present in the final 10. That didn’t happen.

As they collaborated to integrate various tools and toys into a new lesson plan for their discipline, I scuttled around the kitchen, covering food before it spoiled, cleaning to avoid staying (too) late. I didn’t address the revisions due on Monday.

I scheduled a conference call. If I can’t talk before 5, and Pat can’t Skype before 6, and Erin can’t talk after 6:30, and Pat is on vacation next week, and we have to know by next Friday, then when do we talk, observe, and do, since I’ll be driving to and from campus 30 minutes each way M-Th for appointments of 50-120 minutes daily (a fact I learned Monday night), as well as prepping for these obligations, and so cannot dedicate this time to the project?

In the car, Vanessa and I re-designed activities and time slots. If they start at 8:15, and each gives a five-minute overview, and we account for transition time, and then they give three 20-minute presentations, and then there’s a break and flex time for things going wrong, then we’ll have an hour before lunch…

I talked to Jenn, who uncannily brought our conversation to a close at precisely the right minute. I called Erin, who began talking about the week. “It’s 6:03,” I said. “Should I call Pat?” We talked past the appointed cut-off, discussing the nature of the commitment in terms of task and time, constructing a deadline by which to communicate.

Calling back Gramma (who had left a message while I’d been on the other line), I stepped outside to switch my laundry (well past the wash cycle’s culmination) at the exact same moment (7:19 pm) that the FedEx man wandered up, looking for apartment number-less me. What are the odds?

Gramma wished me a safe trip to New York, although I’m not leaving for another two weeks. She told me to ask Mom (Gramma would ask her herself but hasn’t the means since she’s “stuck in the 18th century”) whether Mom’s picked up an Irish brogue yet (Mom has been in-country for less than 24 hours). Finally, Gramma recommended that I let my hair return to its native state. Don’t you like curly hair? “Sure I do, Gramma. But it’s been 20 years. It’s time for a change.”

Malcolm Gladwell made much of hockey players’ birthdays. They’re self-fulfilling prophecies, you know. Tonight is Suzanne’s 30th. His is over the weekend. I am 31 and a half.

So many things to count; respectively: six months, a week and a half, 3 days, 30%.

10:43 pm. So much for going to sleep early.