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I am already immerse to this week’s topic, but today something happened that deserves to be mentioned. My husband is a researcher and part of his job is to attend conferences. This year, for obvious reasons, all conferences have been cancelled and I have seen him attending virtual events, making talks and recording himself.
I guess conference organisers have been trying different ways to recreate what the conference means. Panels, conference, presentations of posters, workshops, etc. But also the social space, informal conversations, networking… Because conferences are the perfect place to meet up and create connections that are beyond work. I have been lucky to attend some conference with him because he always has conferences in cool places like Japan, South Africa or Canary Island. I know this kind of conferences encourage relationships and many of them organise activities, some with family members included! So, every year these conferences are the perfect excuse to do a holiday (after the conference of course!).
Anyways, with the “new reality” conference organisation need to be creative and today my husband joined a conference in which they have created a virtual space through Gather Town that we found very cool, and I wanted to share. Who has created the place wanted to recreate all the relevant elements of a physical conference This platform, though, it has the idea of not having a super realistic environment, ideas that we learn on the article: Virtualizing the real: a virtual reality contemporary sculpture park for children. Virtual spaces are less realistic and that allows the user to fill in the gaps with creativity and imagination Turner (2016).
In this conference we can find:
– Companies stands that when your avatar goes close, it gets interactive, showing a video, linking to their website or there is a person answering the question.
– Social spaces with coffee and cookies!
– You can walk around with your camera and microphone close or open(something that we realised after a while…) When you cross with someone their camera gets visible and you can open a chat.
– Avatar can be customised and we saw some zombies and mummies walking around.
– The big hall where the main conferences happen. With microphones to make questions.
– It is a virtual space but we observed how people keep social distancing while sitting to hear the conference 😉
– Conference in action, with people presenting their posters. I have seen this face to face and I can say that the feeling was quite similar. You could walk around and listen to the conversations people have around the posters.
A funny note, one of my husband’s colleague attending to the conference has said: “I spent some time walking around without talking to anyone, and I realised that is what I do in conferences, the only difference is the free food available.”
On my first post of this block, I described a learning space like “a prepared environment where the student can interact, play and learn from it. We can find a learning space in real life, however, I am thinking in a place that is designed, it pretends to simulate the real world in a challenging but also no-threatening way. It is a safe space of not judgment and where the student can feel free to investigate and challenge their abilities with the support of materials and knowledge.”
After these two weeks, I have been going back to that post to examine my previous thoughts after reading the articles, everyone’s metaphor, and especially the comment you left. This has been resonating in my mind the whole week. “I wonder whether this accommodates the contemplative walk where we find ourselves working through a problem, or the moment in the middle of the night where we might be struck by an original idea, and so on? Can a learning space not also be somewhat more impromptu and unplanned? I suppose it depends on how we define learning?“
It is well exposed on Bayne et al (2014) and Nordquist, J. & Laing, A. (2015) articles, that we are in the situation to affirm that technology has changed the way we can work and learn such that the constraints of time and place are re-defined. Learning space is a fluid and mobile concept and it goes beyond a class or virtual class. However, ‘contemplative walk where we find ourselves working through a problem’ can be defined as a learning space?
I completely embrace the idea that learning can happen everywhere, anytime! Also, I totally share the idea that you can learn while you are walking around or sitting in a cafe. However, where do we draw a line here? depending on what is happening in our brain? I mean, if we are in a cafe solving a problem, then we are learning and the cafe becomes a learning space? but if we are in a class thinking and planning the next summer (without following the class activity), we are not in a learning space?
Going back to the idea of “prepared environment”, I am still thinking that a learning space requires some preparation/intention behind, of course, a cafe can become a place where learning might happen, but not sure if it should have the category of learning space. I hope I can explain myself.
When I think about “prepared” I mean, that someone (the teacher) has an idea in mind, they is thinking in a specific goal to achieve by the students. This set up doesn’t mean that the activities and steps to rich the goal will happen in only one space, in a specific time or with concrete resources. If I use this course as an example, I would say that the prepared environment is: the IDEL virtual portal, with all their elements: announcements, forum, materials and curated articles. Teachers of the course don’t know where the students will engage with the materials and when this will happen, but you know and have some ideas and expectations of what students have to do in order to show progress and learning, don’t you?
That way, I would say that even that I can find my self walking around thinking about the course, and having unplanned learning moment, I would argue that this moment was somehow planned by you (James, as a teacher). Because you were anticipating (and hoping) I would have an “aha moment” and I would learn something. I guess for that reason, we could call ‘learning space’ to all the places I have been thinking and engaging with the materials (physical or virtual).
I remember, when I was teaching people that will become educators of after school classes, normally people with a little background in education. I remember I selected and designed some activities that I thought it was a journey to arrive at a certain point. I expected they would be able to change their view and preconceptions about children. I didn’t want to arrive at the class and make a statement. I wanted them to think about and arrive at their own conclusions, obviously with my particular bias because we know that education is never neutral! I wanted them to have an “aha moment”, and probably that didn’t happen during the hours we were together in the class. I also prepared reading, poems and song for them. I am sure they engaged with those on different places, and probably they critique, answered or made questions about the materials in their minds, far away from the class. I would consider those moments as something prepared. Does it make sense?
Of course, I think that someone can learn without anyone acting as the puppet master of their process of learning! this is not what I am thinking. But, for me, in order to consider a “learning space,” there is involved this idea of preparation and of course interaction with someone acting as a guide, and the design behind.
Learning environments are successful because users are motivated and educated to learn how to use them in particular successful ways. They are helped, educated, and supported to use environments in new ways. This is particularly the case when technology becomes an increasingly significant aspect of the learning environment. This means that the planners, managers, and leaders of learning environments have themselves also to become active agents in the curation, facilitation, and activation of the networked learning landscape that they have helped to brief, design, and construct.
Nordquist, J. & Laing, A. (2015)
As a conclusion, I would say that my previous idea of what is a learning space has not been changed completly, but it has been enriched with more arguments and thoughts. Today I would say that learning space can be defined as the structured context that has been designed to let students play, think and learn. The prepared environment is not only a place where students can learn from, the kind of preparation can make that students engange and learn from a huge range of fluid and open spaces.
Following your suggestion about trying to go further into exploring the use of different resources this week I have intended to use tools I never used before, for example, ThingLink, actually, I think it is the first time I do an interactive image.
In this image I am trying to express what is my engagement with the IDEL course, making special attention to this week’s topic: learning spaces.
I used the University ID because it is my personal connection to the programme. I wanted to make the ID the protagonist of the image story. I carry my ID everywhere, basically because I have it in my phone case. An interesting fact is that I don’t carry it in my wallet. When I got it, I decided to put it on the phone case where I don’t have many spaces for ids, but I keep the important ones: bus ticket, debit card and university ID. Why did I decide to carry it there? I am not sure, maybe I am giving some mysticism, but I have realised that this ID is what makes me feel connected to the course and makes me identify as a student, probably it what makes me feel to be in the campus, whatever I am, embracing the concept of new mobilities paradigm’ that is discussed by Bayne, Gallagher and Lamb (2014), which supports learning in unbounded regions and terrains.
It has shown that the material campus continues to be a symbolically and materially significant ‘mooring’ for a group of students who may never physically attend that campus.
Bayne, Gallagher and Lamb (2014)
With the image, I want to present the different places where I have engaged with the IDEL course and the different tools and resources I have used so far. I would say that my laptop has been my main moored item. It is quite funny because my laptop is not portable anymore, it only turns on when is charging, so it really moors me. However, I feel that my learning space has been fluid in terms that I move around my home depending on what is space is free and quiet to be. Usually, the headquarters is my living room, a comfortable armchair in a nice corner where I like to sit to read and, of course, to write all the post in my blog.
Sometimes, I go to use the uplift desk (usually when I want to keep my eyes open and don’t fall asleep), or a read in the bedroom when everyone is sleeping. On this week Padlet I have discovered that some classmates use a voice reader to hear the articles and be able to do another thing at the same time. I have been inspired by them, and I am sure I will use it in the future to brake more bounded and rigid container that is “reading”.
As you can see in the image, I have used a Kindle, which helped me to be freer and bring my learning space outside the house, for example checking the materials from a playground. But I have also used inside, reading in the Kindle and writing in the laptop. Many times I have found myself having two virtual places used at the same time, for example playing Minecraft on my phone while I was checking tutorials on the laptop. I can say that I have deflated the sedentarist claims.
Today we are celebrating “La castanyada” a Catalan tradition. The translation would be something like “The chestnut party”. Like other regions, countries and cultures today and tomorrow are important days to celebrate: Halloween, El dia de los muertos, Samhain or Todos los santos.
In Catalonia we have our particular party to celebrate the Autumn and be warm. Like any other celebration food it is so important, and we eat cooked chestnuts and Panellets. You can buy panellets, but the best ones are the ones you make at home. We could say that each family has its own recipe and bake the favourite flavours. The traditional ones are made of pine nuts, almond, coconut or lemon, but nowadays you can find so many different ones and everyone will tell you that theirs ARE the original ones!
This year, I have made panellets with my son for the first time, he is only one and I was sure that making panallets would be difficult, but I wanted him to participate at his level and get familiar with the tradition.
Two weeks ago we went to the library and took some books that talk about chestnuts, La castanyada and La castanyera (traditionally an old woman who sells chestnuts and baked sweet potato), and of course a book about panellets. We have been reading and observing the books for the last two weeks, singing songs about this party and getting familiar with all the elements.
Finally, yesterday was the big moment, the moment where we are ready to make panellets and let them ready to eat today. As I said, I knew Blai was too young to follow the whole process, so I adapted the way he will be involved. I considered his materials, the ingredients he was using, the place where he will be placed and what I would be doing. I actually, spent a lot of time thinking WHERE he would be doing the panallets. And of course, I related all the process to this week’s topic.
I thought that all of this was a great metaphor of a learning space. Starting from the concept I had in mind, how I planned the information, how I prepared the space to do the activity and selected the materials and the final moment: where Blai connects all the dots and realises what we are doing!
This blog reflexes my opinion about education, and as a reader, you know that I think that learning can happen everywhere, not only with a very directed instructor, and I believe in promoting daily activities and make connections from there. However, I recognise when I consider a “learning space” I think in a specific time-space. I think in a specific goal, at least a specific concept/idea. What is a learning space then, shared space and time? Is the environment that, as teachers, we recreate in order to guide students to conquer the concept we had in mind? In my case, I think the learning space are all the steps I have taken (going to the library, reading the books, signing the songs, buying ingredients together, prepare the materials, etc… ) in order to have this “aha” moment where my son listens “panellets” and looks at the camera making the sign I have been doing every single day for the last two weeks. So, learning space are all the elements we use and recreate in order to help students to get to our idea/knowledge?
A learning space is a prepared environment where the student can interact, play and learn from it. We can find a learning space in real life, however, I am thinking in a place that is designed, it pretends to simulate the real world in a challenging but also no-threatening way. It is a safe space of not judgment and where the student can feel free to investigate and challenge their abilities with the support of materials and knowledge.
I like the Reggio Emilia view that considers the physical space as the third teacher. I could try to say it with my own words, but I think this quote of Loris Malaguzzi is a perfect description of what I understand for a learning space, what should have and be.
We value space for its power to organize, promote pleasant relationships between people of different ages, create a beautiful environment, bring change, promote options and activities, and its potential to unleash all kinds of social, affective and cognitive learning.All of this contributes to a feeling of well-being and security in children.We also think that, as has been said, the space has to be a kind of aquarium that reflects the ideas, values, attitudes and cultures of the people who live in it.
