[Research] Anybody out there?

[Tabitha Roder]

Hi everyone

Not so new, and not about a deployment exactly, but it maybe an interesting
and different article for people to read.

Presented at Ascilite 2010, you can find the conference proceedings here -
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney10/proceedings.htm - and my
paper here -
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney10/procs/Roder-concise.pdf

Here is the abstract so you can decide if you want to read it:

Within the theme of “Curriculum, technology and transformation for an
unknown future” it seems appropriate to present an image of seeing and
doing things differently that comes from outside of formal education. The
context for this story comes from working as part of the NGO one laptop per
child (olpc) community in New Zealand. The impact of the global olpc
movement has been widely accepted as transformative in its mission to
enable children’s agency in learning and participation in knowledge
building communities. It is a vision that frames future learning within
highly fluid and unstable spaces. In this paper the focus will be on a
local community network that supports this project. Members of the NZ olpc
volunteer community largely learn through informal means. Their learning
spaces are both physical and virtual. They are spread across New Zealand
and are connected to diverse global networks, where they can access
“mentors” and co-learners using Web 2.0 internet based technologies.

Using narrative inquiry (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000) we invite readers to
draw parallels between the community of practice described, with its rich
experiential and informal learning features, to pedagogical possibilities
for formal tertiary settings. Roles for teachers and learners are examined
with particular emphasis paid to the learner as maker and designer in both
the lived physical reality and in the constructivist sense of
meaning-making. This raises questions about the nature of knowledge and its
relationship to pedagogy.* *In addition the recount draws attention to
sociocultural and co-constructed dimensions, where learning is distributed
across the community and knowledge is seen as stretched across the
activities and members of the community (Scardemalia, 2004).

I am on this mailing list so as I can keep up with who is doing research on
what related to OLPC and hope that one day I can do a bit of research that
contributes further to the research already done or being done. I am
relatively new to research and my day job is Academic Development in a
tertiary institution in New Zealand. I am particularly involved in Moodle
as I am an elearning specialist. My involvement with OLPC (for those who
choose not to read the paper) is as a volunteer tester since mid 2008.

Kind regards
Tabitha Roder
eLearning specialist and olpc volunteer
Cell +64 21 482229
tabitha at tabitha.net.nz
http://tabitharoder.wordpress.com/
Winner: NZ Open Source Contributor Award 2010
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