Good stuff, Ted... Michael Shrage is a favorite author of mine, too... (01)
I think that there are really two forks in this discussion. One is the
world of artifacts, things we manually create to do a specified purpose.
Engineers do this; I trust their ability to build a bridge, and even add
beauty to the structure. We need this skill. (02)
The other is the world of emergence, where we bring together the parts,
not knowing what the whole will be. We can't define the emergent
properties of this process, nor measure "success" of the emergence by
per-defined indicators. What we can do, however, is work on the
"fitness function" which shapes the evolution of that which is emerging.
This is another skill we desperately need, but are only dimly aware of.
Given that we are the first generation of the first species which has
taken over the responsibility for shaping its own evolution, this is a
skill we need to learn VERY quickly. (See Jonas Salk's Anatomy of
Reality and conscious evolution)... (03)
-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Kahn [mailto:Ted@designworlds.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 8:38 AM
To: collab-yak@blueoxen.net
Cc: tkahn@nmc.net
Subject: [yak@collab] Fwd: [yak@collab] Re: Survey of yak and tools-yak
on the way (04)
Folks, (05)
I wanted to put in my two cents worth on this (and hopefully, not a
"Three-Penny Opera"). (06)
First, mea culpa--I haven't filled out the survey. I'm on deadlines
for two proposals, including one due at NSF next Monday...I will try
to do this, but I'm time-bound for the next 4-5 days. (07)
The issues Jack, Tom and others have raised about the nature of the
collaboration and conversation that I have seen in this list are
important ones . As Jack knows, I've been running and co-creating a
web-based Bay Area Science Education Collaboratory for science
teachers, and I've learned a couple of design principles about
collaborative online communities that seem to hold for across several
projects: (08)
- (1) collaboration is different than cooperation--it's focused on
designing or making something together, or making something happen.
Conversation and meaning-making are a necessary part of this process,
but if you want to get convergence and leverage of collective
intelligence, talents, and diversity of experiences, the best way to
do this that I have found is to be really making something
together...(Michael Schrage's book, "No More Teams" (initially
published as "Shared Minds" in the early 90's) is one of the best
books I've read about this issue. (09)
- (2) the shared product being designed needs to be a participatory
design effort with real users--and it needs to be designed and have
feedback from other people outside of the design team re. its
usefulness. In technology products and services, we frequently have
what Geoffrey Moore calls a "crossing the chasm" problem--i.e., we
design things and systems for the early adopters and innovators (who
are a slightly extended community of those of us on the design teams,
since we, too, are motivated to do something new, interesting, and
innovative)...but we're not the majority of people who are the user
community. Their value premises and motivations are different--and
we will always run into the "chasm" between the early adopters +
innovators and the early/late majority on a normal bell-shaped
"adoption of innovation" curve if we don't involved people from the
mainstream as co-designers. (010)
This issue leads to a whole discussion about the role of
:"assessment" of efficacy, effectiveness, and learnability --and the
process I've learned that best addresses this is cycles of rapid
prototyping, use, evaluation and reflection...but it has to involve
real users from the mainstream majority. (011)
I'm involved in another very exciting distributed educational
collaborative design effort now with the NMC (New Media Consortium,
nmc.org), which has received a major grant from the federal Institute
of Museum and Library Services (IMLS.gov) to create a
next-generation, open source multimedia authoring and publishing
environment for non-technical people in both museums and
colleges/universities. It's based on a system called Pachyderm, which
was originally created by the SF Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and
this effort involves a core team of 15-20 people from 14 institutions
around the U.S. and Canada--5 art museums, 5 colleges/universities, 2
university libraries, NMC and me (DesignWorlds for Learning) as an
external evaluator. The way we're doing the collaboration is via a
lot of blogging (using TypePad), listserv, collaboratively creating
use scenarios and user personae, and am ambitious distributed open
source sw development, testing and evaluation process. It's a 3-year
grant, with a 1:1 matching financial contribution by all the
partners, and the sw development is already ahead of schedule (we
just started last month)...the great thing is that this product will
be made available totally free of charge to all non-profit museums,
colleges, universities, and potentially, K12 schools, when it's
completed in 2005-2006. If you're interested, take a look at:
http://www.nmc.net/projects/lo/pachyderm.shtml and
http://www.nmc.net/projects/lo/pachyderm.shtml (012)
-Ted
============================================== (013)
>
>Henry K van Eyken wrote:
>
>>Having filled out the survey, I do well understand Jack's sentiment.
>>There is a bridge to be built between his and Tom's. They are
different;
>>not opposed.
>>
>>Henry
>>
>>P.S. And for a first attempt, I think Josh did an admirable job.
>>
>And I, too, think the questions to be an admirable first attempt.
>But, I wonder about a few things, like, what is the nature of a
>collaboratory in the first place.
> Does a collaboratory require/need/want leaders?
> Who asks the questions?
> When a collaboratory performs self-assessment, how is that done?
> Indeed, what is a collaboratory?
>
>Would Tom's "fair sample" best be generated by circulating the
>meta-question "what questions should we be asking of ourselves?"
>
>To be fair, my questions here are typical of reactionaries, and most
>groups have at least one of them, and I also think that Eugene and
>Chris have done Doug Engelbart's vision proud in starting blueoxen
>in the first place.
>
>Jack
>
>
>--
>This message is archived at:
>
>http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=3FB2317E.601
0001@thinkalong.com (014)
--
************************************************************************
*********
Ted M. Kahn, Ph.D.
President & CEO
DesignWorlds for Learning, Inc. http://www.designworlds.com
Principal, CapitalWorks, LLC http://www.capworks.com
1116 Little John Way
San Jose, CA 95129
(408) 252-2285 Fax: (408) 516-9920
ted@designworlds.com
tkahn@capworks.com (015)
NMC Fellow: The New Media Consortium http://www.nmc.net (016)
Bay Area Science Education Collaboratory:
http://www.designworlds.com/Hewlett/BA_ScienceCollab/index.html (017)
Creating Virtual Collaboratories and Communities for Lifelong Learning
************************************************************************
*********** (018)
--
This message is archived at: (019)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=a05210601bbd8
09113071@[10.0.1.4] (020)
--
This message is archived at: (021)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=015e01c3a93c$50ef5560$6401a8c0@tomdesk (022)
|