Dynabook and authentic learning pedagogy

Hi,

A few notes on how Dynabook and authentic learning methodology could be
related.

http://blog.drgeo.eu/post/2018/Authentic-learning

Hilaire

--
Dr. Geo
http://drgeo.eu

Hello Hilaire

Thank you for the short summary what  authentic learning is and the
conclusions what this means for a Dynabook implementation.

You conclude that

Dynabook's tools should support using authentic documents.

I think that in practice this means that DOCX and ODT documents should
be supported in some way.

The Dynabook tools should generate DOCX/ODT documents and also read them. [1]

The cnx repository (https://cnx.org/) for learning materials allows
the author to use DOCX/ODT documents  to upload content. There is the
requirement that a particular style sheet is used. [2]

For Dr. Geo it will probably mean that it can read and write DOCX/ODT
documents which follow some conventions.

The same might also apply for HTML. I am also doing investigations in
JSON based Jupyter notebooks as you can see in another thread. That
might be an easier option though only 'authentic' for a more limited
though large audience.

--Hannes


[1] DOCX - the main file format used by Microsoft Word. ODT for
LibreOffice. Compatibility is OK if you go for a subset of commonly
supported functions. More than sufficient for Dynabook.
LibreOffice 6.1 now supports easy production of epub books.

[2] Mainly requiring the built in titles styles to be used and then
there is a style for code. With this you can achieve a lot.

On 8/23/18, Hilaire <[hidden email]> wrote:

P.S. The reference [1] you give
A. Tricot, L'innovation pédagogique, Retz, 2017
is very instructive.

On 8/24/18, H. Hirzel <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Hannes,


Le 24/08/2018 à 06:59, H. Hirzel a écrit :
Authentic documents are situation or media from the "real world" used in
teaching situation. It can be an analog or digital document: a poster, a
TV advertisement, a TV show, or it can be a real world problem.
Often these ones need to be scaffolded by the teacher to make it
accessible to the students.

Speaking about docs/dot support, could Dynabook support it? It depends
on what it will be.
1. Is Dyanbook just one software among many in a given os host, to
support creative use of computerized simulation?
2. Or is it the whole operating system for the host, disconnected from
today use cases and software (ie libreoffice). For what benefit?
3. Or a mix of both?

Hilaire

--
Dr. Geo
http://drgeo.eu

Hi,

It's good to see this conversations happening on this list.
Conversations below.


On 24/08/18 16:25, Hilaire wrote:
In my case, authentic documents are those that I do mostly with
communities. We have a long tradition of documentation in the Colombian
FLOSS communities with an old wiki that reached, in its good times, 4000
pages (now only spread in offline backups). Most of this documentation
is done using light markup languages and recently a strong tendency is
in the use of variants of Markdown (mainly because of their preeminence
in sites like GitHub and StackOverflow). Also we are concern with online
and offline edition, because connectivity is not a given in countries of
the so called Global South and because web technologies are
(gratuitously?) overcomplicated. Those authentic documentation workflows
and needs are the ones that Grafoscopio is trying to support. Several
demos of such documentation use cases have been done, like the Data
Journalism Handbook[1], blogging on reproducible research and data
activism, storytelling and visualization[2][3][4] and, of course, the
Grafoscopio Manual is written it itself[5] (because, you know, we love
metasystems that help to evolve themselves).

[1] http://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/mapeda/
[2] http://mutabit.com/offray/blog/en/entry/panama-papers-1
[3] http://mutabit.com/offray/blog/en/entry/sdv-infomed
[4] http://mutabit.com/offray/blog/en/entry/ds-twitter-mockup
[5]
http://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/grafoscopio/uv/Docs/En/Books/Manual/manual.pdf

This means that the Dynabook, at least currently can be (de)construct
like something in between a software among many others, running in a
host, but also something connecting to today's real needs, like the ones
you solve in office software (word processing and documentation,
calculation and visualizations, and presentation), despite not solving
them in the same way (what would be the point then?). In Grafoscopio's
case, the outlining metaphor (a la OrgMode[6] or Leo Editor[7]) is
important is such alternative approach do documentation.

[6] http://orgmode.org/
[7] http://leoeditor.com/

Which leads us to the issue of benefit? Who benefits from this other
ways of authentic documentation? One of my issues with current Dynabook
incarnations and research papers, in the form of Smalltalk (and its
variants and projects, including Squeak, Etoys, the original Scratch and
Phracth), is that they are too oriented towards children and teenagers
(with incidentally teachers in the mix) or computer scientist. I felt
that the more I grow up, the more frozen the "software" felt for me,
because the huge gap between the intended audiences of the software
(children, teens, their teachers and computer scientist) and the rest of
the population. If I departed from those communities and needs, it was
difficult to find any place for me in the Dynabook/Smalltalk related
communities and their used tools. There was little to nothing for the
day to day task (i.e. documenting) or it was too insular and departed
for more widely spread practices (i.e. Markdown or Pandoc) or without
the huge traction and diverse functionality of custom made formats and
tools (i.e. OrgMode). It was like if, Smalltalk keeps its curse of being
so concern with the future that was disconnected from most of the
present and so, giving the majority of us no bridge between our present
and the Dynabook vision.

I think that data activism, storytelling and visualization joined with
reproducible research and publishing can help us to bridge the gap
mentioned before for a lot of diverse populations (journalists,
activists, researchers, academics, students) that are leaving or outside
the classroom or are already adults and such themes are concerns from
the present and the upcoming future. That's why Grafoscopio locates in
such places and educational context beyond the classroom (hackerspaces,
workshops, innovation labs, newsrooms). I think that The Home Desktop
System [8] is tackling other knowledge workers with a parallel similar
approach, including outlining [8]

[8] https://github.com/hpi-swa/Rack

Grafoscopio is trying to make its contribution for authentic
documentation in learning pedagogy for long life learning. Children,
teens and the classroom are an important concern and also the needs of
computer scientists, but, of course, they're not enough and we need to
provide more bridges for empowering more diverse populations with
authentic learning pedagoty. I think would be important to know what we
can come with, as a community, so more people can traverse such bridges
and build more.

Cheers,

Offray

Hi Offray,

From my understanding, the Dynabook concept is rooted to the idea of
dynamic media or active essay and user engagement in producing this
dynamic media contents. Etoys is a step in this direction, its
innovative graphical programming environment supports the end user
engagement in producing such dynamic media. I try to explain it in a
previous article (http://blog.drgeo.eu/post/2018/The-Dynabook-Concept).

In my opinion, Scratch is not related to this dynamic media vision. It
only borrows the concept of graphical programming environment to provide
an accessible environment to initiate kids to programming and algorithmic.

The Dynabook concept is very rooted to the constructivism movement and
its learning models, which are not that effective according to
researches. I discussed a bit about that on another article
(http://blog.drgeo.eu/post/2018/The-Dynabook-and-its-learning-models)

Nevertheless, teachers mix different teaching approaches, so I think it
is interesting to look at the dynabook concept under the different
teaching models coined as innovative. I wrote several small texts about
that.

Authentic learning pedagogy is one of this teaching model. In your
example, your authentic document is your raw data and Grafoscopio is a
scaffolding tool to make this data learnable. I am just guessing because
I don't know Grafoscopio. What I found interesting in your case, is the
central position of the text document. Text is such a handy media: video
and audio run on the air then are gone, a text stays there under your
vision, it is very easy to "play it" one paragraph backward or forward.
In Dynabook there is this idea of dynamic book: text with dynamic
content, I love it. As a teacher I will love to be able to produce
textbook with text math and dynamic simulations (geometry, calculus,
algebra micro-world) for the kids to learn with. Such dynamic
simulations could just be pluggable Morph components, teachers will pick
up and/or adapt to specific needs, eventually linkable, à la Etoys, and
shared on the net, etc.

Hilaire



--
Dr. Geo
http://drgeo.eu

Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas-2 wrote
> Smalltalk keeps its curse of being so concern with the future that was
> disconnected from most of the present and so, giving the majority of us no
> bridge between our present
> and the Dynabook vision.

The idea of a bridge is an interesting one.

One of the core Dynabook/Smalltalk principles is that the whole computer
should be available for inspection and experimentation by the user. As Dan
Ingalls said about operating systems "there shouldn't be one".

However, the rest of the world is stuck in an application/stovepipe model.
While that may cripple and pigeonhole users' creativity, it's a reality that
to be practically and generally useful the Dynabook would now have to
deal/interact effectively with that whole mess while we're waiting for the
rest of the world to catch up to our better way of doing things.



-----
Cheers,
Sean
--
Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

On 8/26/18, Sean P. DeNigris <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas-2 wrote
>> Smalltalk keeps its curse of being so concern with the future that was
>> disconnected from most of the present and so, giving the majority of us
>> no
>> bridge between our present
>> and the Dynabook vision.
>
> The idea of a bridge is an interesting one.

This idea needs to be further elaborated and then the gaps should be
identified and so that bridges may be built.

This should make it possible to use existing material from the curriculum.