Piasa Bluffs Writing Project

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Amy Kloss replied to Ralph Cordova's discussion Reflecting on the 2012 ISI Orientation: Tuesday May 1, 2012 in the group 2012 Invitational Summer Institute
"1. I noticed that this community is one filled with teachers of many content areas and age groups; but we all have one thing in common: we care to improve ourselves as educators. After just a few hours with the group, I can tell that we are going to…"
Thursday
Ralph Cordova added a discussion to the group 2012 Invitational Summer Institute
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Reflecting on the 2012 ISI Orientation: Tuesday May 1, 2012

Now that you've had one collectively shared experience together during our Orientation, please share some thoughts on:1. What you noticed about the community we began to form Tuesday evening.2. Initial ideas about your Inquiry Into My Practice (IIMP). In particular:• What aspect of your practice or activity do you want to share with us?• What aspects of it (if you already know what your IIMP focus will be) do you know work well, and why do they work well?• What aspects of it do you want…See More
May 6
Ralph Cordova posted a group
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2012 Invitational Summer Institute

For 2012 Fellows, insights, communications and provocations.See More
May 6
Mary Joan Gober posted a photo
Feb 5

Blog Posts

2011 PBWP Writing Retreat

The Passionate Pursuit of Writing

2011 PBWP Writing Retreat

 

After bagels and our first quick write, we shared our writing goals, and discussed the variety of works planned and works in progress.  We then scattered to different parts of the building.  Dawn and Jessica went upstairs to a room with large tables and sunlight…

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Posted by Susan Cantonwine on June 4, 2011 at 4:39pm — 3 Comments

PILA

Well, with encouragement from my sister and a real need to find a WOW activity to submit for National Boards renewal, I had my sixth grade students sketch, observe, discuss, observe again with a 'tool', generate a question, and finally write a poem in groups about a famous work of art.  

Prior to video taping the lesson for Boards, I had introduced other famous paintings to my students and loaded them  up with content-rich vocabulary:  perspective, brushstrokes, mood, historical…

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Posted by Mischele Wilson on April 9, 2011 at 3:07pm

Monet Confabulates with the CoLab & Interchange

On Monday October 23, 2011 The Saint Louis Art Museum's Monet Exhibition "The Waterlillies" from from a "potential text to be read" to an multimodal resource for learning interacted with and learned from with ResponsiveDesign™, the CoLab's theory of action. 

 

CoLab and Interchange educators got to know each other and pursue their professional learning in an evening where the museum would become a cultural landscape for learning.

 

In order to develop a shared language on interdisciplinary actions, we unpacked what artists, musicians and dancers do in their respective fields. Then we rotated around each set of practices that were written on chart paper that eventuated in distilling the top most essential practices from within each field.  We then silently created a concept map of the relationship among those disciplinary actions. We learned that artists, dancers & musicians all go about their work as meaning-makers in particular ways particular to their disciplines. However, when viewed from a more distanced perspective, the functions of how they go about their works is identical across all disciplines: explore, collaborate, analyze, document, synthesize story-tell, etc.

 

We would then take these three disciplines an embody them during Mike's IIMP (Inquiry Into My Practice) as he guided us in a scaffolded processes of interacting with and learning from Monet's Water Lillies as multiple texts to be read.

 

Knowing that disciplinary actions are distinctive from one another and generally related to each other as forms is one thing. Exploring the relationship among them through and experiential process, and, the insights that emerge from simultaneously kinesthetically, aesthetically and intellectually engaging through concept-formation is altogether different. 

 

By having developed a shared language, or frame of reference, through which we would engage in subsequent experiences, the several communities of educators, became one experiential organism that began to interact with each other and learn form our respective experiences as educators from our own cultural landscapes.

 

Mike and Ralph guided the Monet experiences by first engaging in a Prefacing professional dialogue grounded in our ResponsiveDesign™ methdology to articulate what the lead teacher (Mike) would explore, envision and enact in his lesson that he will prototype and "test" or crow-source in realtime. In a consequentially progressive scaffolded process, we were guided into trying one multiple ways of seeing the Monet from broad-looking, narrow-looking, moving into the piece, sketching a part of the piece we wanted to own and representing the piece by enacting colors, shapes and lines that we began to see.

 

We became instruments, each of us, bringing sound to our own part of the Monet in a cacophony of beautifully and discordant sounds. Mike, helped us to become one larger organism, a soundscape making creature, that helped the Monet develop sounds and voices to its luscious and peaceful visual beauty that it is.

Visiting Stanford's d.School

Our SizzleReel for the REDtalk Ann Taylor and I gave at Stanford University's d.School's REDlab on September 15, 2011.

Dr. Shelley Goldman, director of Stanford University's d.School's REDlab invited Ralph Córdova and Ann Taylor to give a REDtalk at their Intersection of Design in Education conference September 16 - 17.

 

On Day 1: September 15, 2011 all invitees gave their REDtalks. There were three clusters of talks around three themes: 1. Research in Design in Schools, 2. in Teacher Education and Professional Development Settings, and, 3. Researcher into the larger field of education and design.

 

After each cluster of talks, we created smaller groups to confabulate and tease out the main themes. Here, TayTay reports what her smaller group uncovered after cluster theme #1:

 

   

 

Patti then reported what her group teased out from cluster #1 REDtalks

 

 

As you can see, we got right into the throes of the discussion.

 

 

Forum

Just thought I'd share

I have been reading, "Shaping School Culture" by Deal and Peterson. It has struck me quite distinctly that so many of the ideas behind understanding, restructuring and shaping school cultures have…Continue

Started by Jean Heil in The CoLab Jan 16.

2011 NWP Annual Meeting: CoLab Session on Site Innovation and Creativity

Dear Colleagues: On Thursday November 17, 2011, The Piasa Bluffs Writing Project as part of the CoLab led a session at the NWP Annual Meeting titled: The CoLab is at the Intersection of Education and…Continue

Started by Ralph Cordova in The CoLab Nov 28, 2011.

What Learning Could Look Like

Looking at this blog post gives me thoughts about the potential for learning when there is a strong foundation of Responsive Design: …Continue

Started by Jessica Pilgreen in The CoLab Nov 25, 2011.

Unfolding Language, Unfolding Ourselves 5 Replies

As we listen to the interview, think about connections between Berko's ideas and findings as technologies, or lenses, that help us tighten, rethink and or re-see our own individual and collective…Continue

Started by Ralph Cordova in The CoLab. Last reply by Jeff Hudson Nov 14, 2011.

 
 
 

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