Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom

TEACHING IN THE CONNECTED LEARNING CLASSROOM The Digital Media + Learning Research Hub Report Series on Connected Learning Edited By: Antero Garcia Written By: Christina Cantrill Danielle Filipiak Antero Garcia Bud Hunt Clifford Lee Nicole Mirra Cindy O’Donnell-Allen Kylie Peppler Digital Media + Learning Research Hub This digital edition of Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Unported 3.0 License (CC BY 3.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ ISBN-13: 978-0-9887255-2-2 Published by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. Irvine, CA. February 2014. Produced by The National Writing Project. A full-text PDF of this report is available as a free download from www.dmlhub.net/publications Suggested citation: Garcia, Antero, ed., 2014. Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. This report series on connected learning was made possible by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in connection with its grant making initiative on Digital Media and Learning. For more information on the initiative visit www.macfound.org. For more information on connected learning visit www.connectedlearning.tv. 2 | TeachING IN THE CONNECTED LEARNING ClasSROOM CONTENTS 4 FOREWORD Kylie Peppler, Indiana University 6 INTRODUCTION: TEACHER AGENCY AND CONNECTED LEARNING Antero Garcia, Colorado State University 10 CHAPTER ONE: INTEREST-DRIVEN LEARNING Nicole Mirra, University of California, Los Angeles 25 CHAPTER TWO: PEER-SUPPORTED LEARNING Cindy O’Donnell-Allen, Colorado State University 39 CHAPTER THREE: ACADEMICALLY ORIENTED TEACHING Antero Garcia, Colorado State University 55 CHAPTER FOUR: PRODUCTION-CENTERED CLASSROOMS Clifford Lee, St. Mary’s College of California 71 CHAPTER FIVE: OPENLY NETWORKED Bud Hunt, St. Vrain Valley School District 87 CHAPTER SIX: SHARED PURPOSE Danielle Filipiak, Teachers College 103 CONCLUSION Antero Garcia, Colorado State University 106 AFTERWORD Christina Cantrill, National Writing Project 108 REFERENCES 110 CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES 3 | TeachING IN THE CONNECTED LEARNING ClasSROOM FOREWORD Kylie Peppler, Indiana University In common attempts to standardize what and how teaching is conducted, we often fail to recog- nize the tremendous amount of innovation that educators bring to solving an array of challenges in today’s classrooms. This volume highlights compelling firsthand counter-narratives from educators engaged in exactly this work, underscoring the fact that today’s teachers have to design the classroom experience in ever-changing contexts in order to be successful. Educators have to fluidly adapt to constant interruptions, create new instructional materials, utilize new technologies, respond to the changing needs of their students, and wrestle with new policy movements and their implications for the classroom. All of this requires a tremendous amount of insight and commitment to the iterative design process on the part of the teacher and the classroom community. This volume draws together narratives from an inspiring group of educators within the National Writing Project (NWP)—a collaborative network of instructors dedicated to enhancing student learning and effecting positive change—that contributes to our understanding of what “Digital Is” (DI). DI is a web community for practitioners with high levels of expertise and a deep commitment to engaging today’s youth by fostering connections between their in- and out-of-school digital literacy practices. Furthermore, DI is about sharing experiences that offer visibility into the complexity of the everyday classroom, as well as the intelligence that the teaching profes- sion demands. What follows is not a how-to guide or a set of discrete tools, but a journey to rethink, iterate, and assess how we can make education more relevant to today’s youth. The chapters in this volume represent a bold re-envisioning of what education can look like, as well as illustrate what it means to open the doors to youth culture and the promise that this work holds. While there are certainly similarities across these diverse narratives, the key is that they have taken a common set of design principles and applied them to their particular educational context. Moreover, these examples aren’t your typical approaches to the classroom; these educators are talking about integrating design principles into their living practice derived from cutting-edge research. We know from this research that forging learning opportunities between academic pursuits, youth’s digital interests, and peer culture is not only possible, but positions youth to adapt and thrive under the ever-shifting demands of the twenty-first century. We refer to this approach as the theory and practice of “connected learning,” which offers a set of design principles—further articulated by this group of educators—for how to meet the needs of students seeking coherence across the boundaries of school, out-of-school, and today’s workplace. Taken together, these narratives can be considered “working examples” that serve as models for how educators can leverage connected learning principles in making context-dependent decisions to better support their learners. As a designer and researcher of new technologies to promote creative learning, I personally took this journey as I co-designed a new digital media curriculum with educators from the National Writing Project. Though we started with a set of exciting new digital tools, we ended up radical- ly re-designing almost everything about the curriculum as the teachers embarked in the co-design process—revamping classroom activities, rethinking current theories of systems thinking, and 4 | TeachING IN THE CONNECTED LEARNING ClasSROOM aligning our designs to promote high-quality teaching and learning. I came to the table with a set of tools to use but left with an experience of what it meant to engage in the design process as an educator. If you, too, are inspired to take this journey, you will have to commit to being a designer-in-context. The benefits of doing so are manifold: You can expect to be more actively engaged in your work, and you also can expect more actively engaged students as they help to shape the result- ing designs. When we, as educators, begin to see ourselves as designers, we immediately reposi- tion ourselves as active agents of change in today’s educational environment. Moreover, given the continued failure of retaining non-dominant youth in the schooling system, it behooves educators to explore how connected learning practices might exemplify a particularly important avenue for learning and equity in the twenty-first century. 5 | TeachING IN THE CONNECTED LEARNING ClasSROOM INTRODUCTION: TEACHER AGENCY AND CONNECTED LEARNING Antero Garcia, Colorado State University Classroom of Today Classrooms and schools today look remarkably like classrooms and schools of the past. The factory model of schools in the United States—with desks and bells and Carnegie units and panopticon-like designs—is alive and well as we continue deep into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Sure, there are updates: The Apple IIe computers that allowed me to play The Oregon Trail as a child of the ’80s has been replaced by slimmer and shinier brethren, and the boards in front of the classroom have gone from black to white to digitally “smart.” But in nearly all respects, the classrooms and how they function today look strikingly the same as they have for decades. This stagnancy would not be much of a problem if the rest of society also remained in stasis. However, that’s simply not the case. An Environment of Connected Learning Kids today are learning, engaging, and producing in richly productive and collaborative ways. Media products can now function as building blocks for unique and personalized productions. From discarded cardboard transformed into cityscapes and vehicles to taking one’s favorite book characters and rewriting new adventures for them, learning and production are centered around youth interests in many out-of-school contexts. And these aren’t new dispositions; the previ- ous two examples are deliberately highlighting things kids are doing with or without the use of computers. What is new, though, is the ways youth expertise can be networked, amplified, and pinpointed globally with new media tools. These new forms of engagement that we see shaping how youth learn and connect comprise what a research team spearheaded by Mimi Ito call “connected learning.” In their 2013 report, Con- nected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design, Ito et al. write that connected learning is: socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity. Connected learning is realized when a young person pursues a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career pos- sibilities, or civic engagement. And while youth learning is at the center of connected learning, this book makes the case that the framework presented in Connected Learning functions as a set of key design principles for today’s teachers to consider. While connected learning principles are seen flourishing in out-of- school spaces, there are fewer articulations of how connected learning can help inspire and shift existing teacher practices. Connected learning transforms classroom spaces and shifts expectations of

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