Social discussion of CS in K-12

["Reese, George Clifford" <reese AT illinois.edu>]

Hi Martin, 
This has taken me a couple weeks to get to this, perhaps because I knew it 
would take a while. And in the end, I could only get started, not finished. 
Not sure what finished would mean. -George


"But for the ....leadership.... contributions of... Judy Wiegand and Unit 
4,.... our collaborative projects would have struggled to...get off the 
ground in working in the schools with computational thinking."

"But for the ....research.... contributions of... Maya, Quinn, Travis, Saad 
and others,.... our collaborative projects would have struggled to...document 
through careful collection of data the important changes taking place at our 
partner school." 

"But for the ....teacher-oriented leadership of.... contributions of... Todd 
Lash, Jessica Pitcher, and Minsoo Park,.... our collaborative projects would 
have struggled to...happen AT ALL. Teachers who pick up the ball and run, 
always in the face of huge obstacles in time and resources, are an 
inspiration."

"But for the ....inspirational.... contributions of... those young students 
at Kenwood.... our collaborative projects would have struggled to...feel the 
validation of student success that you can see as you watch them work 
together and learn."

"But for the ....relentless transparency.... contributions of...,Charles 
Schultz,.... our collaborative projects would have struggled to...be 
thoughtful of the implications in each of the steps in our collaboration, 
remembering that there are constituencies beyond those who come to meetings."

"But for the ....entrepreneurial-minded.... contributions of... Mike Royse, 
Kerris Lee, Dan Ditchfield, and others,.... our collaborative projects would 
have struggled to...have the gumption to jump in and do it."

"But for the ....creative.... contributions of... Katrina Kennett and .... 
our collaborative projects would have struggled to...incorporate new 
democratically-oriented ideas like EdCamp that provide a shot of energy and 
broaden our discussion."

It feels to me that I could go on and on in this vein. ...

But I don't want to forget us at MSTE.
"But for ... George and Michael's... contribution, our collaborative projects 
would have struggled to...meet regularly to talk and share and drink beer and 
coffee and celebrate." ;)

As you note, we typically do this with citations. It's interesting to think 
of this in the context of traditional academic writing. One is inclined to 
say things like the following: 
Our collaboration was inspired by early strategic leadership (Wiegand et al., 
Royse et al.,) and the receptivity and engagement of teachers (Lash et al.) 
and most of all their students' energy (See Kenwood K-5 students' 
presentations). Thankfully we have documented some of this through systematic 
research efforts (Israel, et al., 2015) as well as regular meetings and a 
growing intellectual eco-system around school transformation and educational 
innovation. 


George Reese
Office for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education (MSTE)
505 East Green St. 
Suite 102
Champaign, IL 61820
217-333-6604


-----Original Message-----
From: 
ctrl-shift-bounces AT lists.mste.illinois.edu
 
[mailto:ctrl-shift-bounces AT lists.mste.illinois.edu]
 On Behalf Of Martin Wolske
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 12:07 PM
To: 
ctrl-shift AT lists.mste.illinois.edu
Subject: [Ctrl-Shift] But for...

Hi all,

As we prepare for the public engagement symposium, and as we work on various 
writing projects, but also to further help us in our own reflections on our 
wonderful work together, I'd like to propose a possible group exercise. This 
was something suggested last fall at a session of the Engagement Scholarship 
Consortium in relation to doing evaluation that works to move beyond 
privileging the contributions and perspective of just one entity. For this 
university group, in talking with funders, directors, the university more 
broadly, they first highlighted the great successes of the project overall. 
Then they described their contributions and concluded by saying "But for our 
contribution, this project would not have been able to..." while also 
highlighting in reports and presentations the other contributors and stating 
"But for the contribution of this partner and that partner, this project 
would not have been able to..." We already are expected to do this by 
highlighting the academic literature that informed our work. 
This group is working to extend that to equally privilege community and 
university partners contributions.

I would be extremely curious to hear from each person on this list 
reflections, sent as a series of emails or as one attached reflection 
document, on the questions:
"But for your own contribution, our collaborative projects would have 
struggled to..."
"But for the ________ contributions of ________, our collaborative projects 
would have struggled to..." (where the first blank is the ways in which 
contributions were made and the second blank is who specifically made those 
contributions)

For the second, this might include past teachers or mentors, books and 
articles you've read, etc. as well as a person or organization active in our 
work today. Who do you see stepping up to the plate to make a contribution, 
and how? Who contributed in important ways in the past to influence your 
ideas, attitudes, behavior, etc. that are now having an influence on our work 
today?

I suspect the story isn't just or perhaps even primarily the digital 
technologies and coding that's happening, but the organic community, both 
adult and child/teen peer, that has been developing, and it would be 
fascinating to get a better sense of the layers of connections that comprise 
the community. Perhaps this exercise would help begin bringing that to 
light???

-- Martin

--
Martin Wolske, Senior Research Scientist and Adjunct Faculty Graduate School 
of Library & Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
337 LIS Building, 501 East Daniel Street Champaign, IL  61820

217-244-8094 (office) 217-244-3302 (fax) 217-840-7434 (cell) Google Hangout: 
martin.wolske; Twitter: @MartinBWolske; Blog: http://mwolske.wordpress.com


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