These are probems related to being able to move ideas and discussion successfully forward through time. Students and tutors neeed to know How to locate information/discussion from the past How to retain relevant information not linked to assessment How to prioritise information/discussion to be moved forward How to return to a point new to them […]
I’m thinking about improvable objects at the moment. Or, rather, I’m thinking about a version of improvable objects. Because talk is ephemeral, improvable objects are things that groups of learners use to move ideas and knowledge through time. They might be documents that they are working on, or a model they are making, or a map […]
The amount of times I change my research questions is verging on the ridiculous. Still, I will get there. I know they’re out there somewhere, waiting for me to find them. I think these ones are pretty close: Main question How is asynchronous dialogue used to build shared knowledge over time? Sub-questions How do tutors […]
I must admit, I couldn’t see much point to Google Books. After all, who’s going to read an entire book online? But now I’m a convert. So many of the relevant books in my field are now online that it’s really speeding up my work. For example, I’ve got Neil Mercer’s ‘Words and Minds’ by […]
Mercer, N., & Edwards, D. (1989). Common knowledge: the development of understanding in the classroom: Routledge. Context is ‘everything that the participants in a conversation know and understand, over and above that which is explicit in what they say, that contributes to how they make sense of what is said’ (p63). Continuity is ‘the development […]
My original proposal for my PhD was about virtual international communities in primary schools. Why? Well, apart from the excellent, and convincing, reasons I gave at my initial interview, it was what I thought I was most likely to be accepted for. With a 25-year-old degree in English, and a 20-year-old masters in history I […]
In the last month my entire thesis has undergone a radical rethink, as I have moved completely away from community, to consideration of temporality in the context of asynchronous dialogue. I think this is the right move to make – I’ve got excellent data to support a study of temporality, and it fits in with […]