Collaboratively Evolving

Module 2: Collaborative Communities

I am positively floored by how much I learned this week in Collaborative Classrooms - how much I've evolved! I had such a healing week. It started with realizing how much more posting is required in this class than other classes I've taken in this certificate process: my feedback last week was less than stellar because I totally forgot to respond to both discussions! Anyway . . . .

Once I decided to drill down and pay more attention to following directions (8-), and after I had completed absorbing the reading, and after I had chosen my own article and read that, I was more-or-less ready to post. And I wrote for hours. I wrote and wrote and wrote what was for me a summary of learning theorists having to do with constructivism and social constructivism. I got really into it because I had actually studied these people before over the years, in my educational pursuits, and I really admired what they had to say. So I wrote a pretty long (for online purposes) summary of what I had learned and then posted it.

And then Dr. Lehmann posted to "everybody" that we needed to think like online teachers and write concisely so as to leave room for our own students to write and explore what they think!

And bells rang off. By her explaining that she was teaching us not so much as her students but as teachers ourselves, I understood something I hadn't understood before. I was totally wrapped up in being a student, a role which I love and treasure. When she explained she's relating to us as teachers, everything fell into place. I think.

So I started responding and wrote my next post with conciseness (concission?) and out-loud appreciated the conciseness of everyone whose posts I read! Everyone I read had managed to pack a powerful whallop of meaning into one screen-sized page. It was wonderful! It did invite me, as my peer's student, in to their writing so that I could absorb what they were saying and then respond.

So I 'umbled myself and accepted more of a need for conciseness on my part.

And then, something even more powerful happened!!!

We're learning and writing about social constructivism, which means we construct our own meaning around content within a social structure! Vygotsky, the father of social constructivism, wrote that there is an area of potential learning just outside our reach, on the edges of what we already know, called the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and here's the kicker: This ZPD, according to Vygotsky, can only be accessed by us if we have another person in at least a somewhat supportive position around us while we're learning. This person can be the teacher or another student or a sibling doing their homework over there.

And what really got my flag flying was THAT EVERYONE I READ AND RESPONDED TO, INCLUDING ME, WAS OPERATING WITHIN OUR OWN ZONES OF PROXIMATE DEVELOPMENT! We were zooming, and we were doing it together, and it was really fun. It was work, and it was time-consuming and required thinking and consideration, not to mention looking up citations, but it was literally the Joy of Learning in action - together!

And then something truly amazing happened: one student responded to my summary in a way that melted my heart. She had actually read the whole thing, and she totally grokked what I was saying and why I was saying it. She thanked me for writing it and introducing each theorists in a way that invited further learning by the reader! It was powerful for me to have my work acknowledged like that. And really, really, nice. Thank you, Lisa!

And a lot of us have been posting together for many months now. Each class in our certificate program takes two months and quite a few of us have been in the same or similar classes together now for more than six months. But I've never seen us zooming like I did this week. It was really fun learning together like that. It's like we've been learning together all these months but it took this build-up of learning and familiarity to get us where we are now - together.

And I'm pretty sure it has to do with the number of times we're posting in this class - at least four times per week for the highest grade. And we're posting in a large group (our class) as well as a small group (four or five people), for which we also had to come up with material and study it to present it. And all this presenting has to be done by Wednesday! So we've all geared up by this second week of this fourth class to do so much research and posting, due to the expectations of our wonderful teacher, and we are rising to meet those expectations! s'Wonderful! s'Marvelous!

"Students choose to learn because of the encouragement that they receive." Isn't that beautiful??? Simply beautiful! It captures the very essence of the Joy of Socially Constructivist Learning: It acknowledges the empowerment of students to choose how to learn, how to construct their own meaning - and indeed, whether they will; and, it acknowledges the importance and power of the teacher or other student or other person on the other side of the student's Zone of Proximal Development. It is so beautiful. Because it's really true, isn't it? That whether the teacher is the sage on the stage or the guide on the side, teachers are really important. We don't remember our best teachers because of what they taught us. We remember them for how they taught us.All of this, for me, centered around the meaning crystallized in one sentence by my classmate, Connie Schauer:

Thanks for reading! 8-)

Reference: Discussion Post on D2L from Connie Schauer, Jul 8, 2015.