THIS WEEK’S TOPIC
We’re still working away on “representational guidance”, and looking at articles by Suthers, Liddo & Shum, and Stahl.

Here are this week’s questions:

• What is the connection between “contested meaning making” in Liddo and Shum, and Knowledge Building? Are they similar? What about the tools they propose?
• How can you use Suthers’ article to analyze Knowledge Forum, or other tools you know of (Etherpad?)
• Imagine how we could use deictic indexing/referring from Stahl (2006) to improving Etherpad. Any other tools that could be improved in this way?
• Are there aspects of collaborative tools that don’t fit Suthers’ categories?

BLOG POSTS AND ACTIVITIES
Joe posted an entry on his blog contributing to the important discussions currently going on (on the badges page) about the usefulness, value and potential integration of badges as forms of assessment for this course. This is a really interesting and critical issue to discuss, not only for this course, but for others like it, and it would be great if participants (time allowing) and followers alike could contribute.

Stian posted a great entry on the the Suthers’ article, and Monica also contributed a blog engaging question #2 for this week (see above)

RESOURCES

• Kohn, Alfie (1987). Studies find reward often no motivator. Boston Globe, Monday January 19.
• Suthers, D. (2001). Towards a systematic study of representational guidance for collaborative learning discourse. Journal Of Universal Computer Science. (see Stian’s summary notes here)
• van Drie, J., van Boxtel, C., Jaspers, J., & Kanselaar, G. (2005). Effects of representational guidance on domain specific reasoning in CSCL. Computers in Human Behavior, 21:4, 575-602
• van Drie, J., van, Boxtel, C.A.M. van & Kanselaar, G. (2003). Supporting historical reasoning within CSCL. Padova, Italy, 10th European Conference for research on learning and instruction.

(**other papers are mentioned in various blogs this week, but the above represent open access articles).

WHERE WE’RE HEADED
Keep reading, blogging, commenting on this week’s theme! Also, remember to add your two cents in about what to discuss. on top of course readings, at the new meeting agenda page.

FYI: this week’s meeting is the same time, same place: Sat 5pm EST, piratepad for meeting 5.