I finished going through the transcript for the chat that took place during the first 48 hours of the 2007 K12 Online Conference, while flying from Minnesota to JFK yesterday. I have to say, first off, that reviewing and commenting on chat was helpful for me. The conversation emerged several times, about the boundaries that existed in that conversation, that traction was coming from the participants, bouncing ideas off of each other, pushing and pulling.
Then, I was able to factor out the boundary of time, and insert my comments into the conversation with the benefit of some reflection. The transcript is four quite uneven pages long — probably because I did the work in four sittings.
One of the many things that impressed me about the chat occurred early on, when much of the conversation was about the slowness of the download. I deleted much of that conversation from the chat transcript, because it did not really contribute to the topics at hand. But several folks started brainstorming ways to produce mirror sites for the keynote. I know of two additional links that were produced, and read in a blog yesterday that someone put it on Google Video.
The resourcefulness and collaboration impressed me. We were watching learners overcome a boundary. Perhaps this is one of types of boundaries that we should consider inventing, boundaries that are created to be overcome. It’s another edu concept in Ender’s Game, that the students were encouraged to play video games, and Ender and other students learned to hack the games, and the teachers were able to discretely observer and assess the future commanders as they accomplished goals by changing the rules.
One of the most interesting sessions that I attended at the Education and Video Games conference a few months ago was a session on cheating, and so much of what was going on was incredible resourcefulness. Cheating was as intellectually challenging as playing the game the way it was designed to be played.
Have a nice Sunday!
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