Reflection on LRNG project
Food in Nature and Culture
Developing ideas from an understanding of materials
Like all the other projects, the LRNG project stroke me as overwhelming
at first but ended up with satisfying outcomes. The whole process was itself a
process of tinkering, a better understanding of materials and improvisation
with resources.
It took me a while to figure out what LRNG platform is. That
was the first layer of materiality in this project. At first it also loomed so
large and intimidating for me like all the other new materials I had to
understand in most of the projects (Scratch, laser cutting, three-D printing,
scribbling machine and circuit sewing, etc.). After I got to understand the
structure of the platform, its affordances and constraints, and the ethos it
supports, things are more transparent and these elements played an important
role in shaping my design. Thus, the LRNG platform where educators design
courses for children to learn and to achieve has become an “object to think
with” that provides a guideline informing the size, form and meaning of my
design.
In the very beginning, we (me and Rob) came up with an idea
of Chinese cuisines in different regions during a class session after a
discussion of the spicy Chinese food he likes. However, I found this idea too
elusive and too big. What’s more, it may not be attractive to children or even young
adults (the factor of age-specificity for the platform playlist) if it is
simply for them to learn about certain facts. Still not knowing what to do with
this murky idea, I decided to watch a well-known documentary series about the food
traditions in China, A Bite of China,
made by a reputable Chinese producer. They received wide-spread and universal
acclaim in China after publication. Totally different from the average cooking programs
on TV, the documentaries approach food from an anthropological perspective from
which nature, culture, society and people are all related. I think this is why
viewers find them so appealing and touching. For example, the first episode of
the series features the stories of how people collect food from various
difficult natural environment while embodying a spirit of optimism, a respect
for nature, and an awareness of sustainability. This video served as a great
inspiration to me, narrowed down my focus, and gave rise to a new idea. So, I
shifted my design plan from an introduction to cuisines to making a documentary
of a family cuisine.
I find this idea more attractive and meaningful in a number
of ways. Firstly, it enables youth to learn by making. Instead of cooking, over
which I was concerned about issues like feasibility and age specificity,
learners may develop new insights and create new knowledge by making a
documentary, and camera, it follows, (in whatever forms) is their
“object-to-think-with”. Secondly, learners are encouraged to see food in a
different light. As our life has been gradually removed from our agricultural
past, children seldom have the opportunity to know where their foods come from.
This project will allow them to explore food resources in natural environment,
how they are collected, harvested, and delivered to our dinner table, from
which they can develop a new vision of the relationship between food and nature
and a respect for people who provide food for us. Thirdly, children are
encouraged to appreciate their own special food traditions and their cultures. As
a departure from my original idea of learning about Chinese food alone, the new
focus is a world food heritage and diversity, as learners may have come from a
diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. With a documentary about a special
food valued in their tradition, children can work like an ambassador of their
culture or family tradition by sharing it online.
I have mentioned in my reflection on learning that one of
the biggest takeaway from this course is a new vision of the important roles played
by materials in learning. Concepts like “object-to-think-with” and “bricolage”
are so impressive (Turkle & Papert, 1992). And I cannot agree more with the
observation of Petrich, Wilkinson and Revan (2013) that innovation happens when
new tinkering strategies emerge through growing understanding of tools,
materials, and phenomena (p.54). I developed the idea for this project out of an
exploration of the structure of the platform itself, the videos I watched for
resources and inspiration, and, needless to say, the video editing tools I have
been tinkering with myself in order to provide resources for XPs. These are
important materials for me that have contributed to the making of the playlist.
Highlights of the
XPs—design for designers
The most impressive principle of constructionism that has
impacted me as an educator is the idea of “design for designers.” I see it
embodied in most of our projects and activities, especially, in DIY, Scratch,
makerspace, and digital interest-driven arts learning. When we design a
learning project or process, what we need to concern ourselves with is whether
our design will facilitate our students’ designing, as opposed to pure
consumerism (Petrich, Wilkinson & Bevan, 2013; Resnick & Rosenbaum, 2013).
The design of this project is an embodiment of these ideas and each XP is supposed
to be a step leading to the final result of a complete documentary. By the time
they finish the project, they will be able to learn to design a documentary
themselves.
At the same time, I would like to make sure that tools like
cameras can help children create meanings, not just as something to play with
or something taken for granted, as Duckworth (1972) says: “I believe that the
tools cannot help developing once children have something real to think about;
and if they don’t have anything real to think about, they won’t be applying
tools anyway. That is, there really is no such thing as a contentless
intellectual tool. If a person has some knowledge at his disposal, he can try
to make sense of new experiences and new information related to it. He fits it
into what he has (p.13).” This also helps me to answer the questioning from a
colleague when she suggested that our design missed the focus on food by
leading learners to produce a documentary instead. Like pen, pencil, brush,
keyboard, camera is a tool to create meaning with. For that matter, a camera
will not be able to help children develop intellectually if there is no idea on
which the tool can be applied.
Our playlist is composed by five XPs. Each one is a combination
of aspects of food and the curatorship of videotaped information. In the very
first XP, learners were prompted to think of a special food in their family and
reflect on why it is important in their tradition. They are asked to record the
answers they find with a camera (or anything that has a camera in). A short
video of “how you can make videos with smartphones” is used as a resource. The second
and the third ones are about the idea of respect for food in which learners are
encouraged to find out about food in nature and society. In both XPs I show
examples first as an inspiration for students. In the second one, I used a
video clip from A Bite of China, in
which workers dig lotus roots from silt. The job is very demanding of both
strength and skills. And the working conditions are poor. This is touching for
me in the first place. I was born in the area where lotus roots are a common
dinner table vegetable affordable by any average family. But I have never given
an extra thought about the difficulty with which to collect them. So I want to
pass down this kind of appreciation to my students. Rob like the cinnamon video
I used in the third XP too. It is about what cinnamon really is, where it comes
from and how it is processed. Our hope is that with an eye of appreciation, learners
are able to create a new aspect of meaning from the food they probably have taken
for granted. In this two sections, students can practice their skills in
designing interviews, probably writing script, and shooting with camera. In XP
4, the cooking of this food in the family kitchen is the highlight. This may
also be a family time with both parents and children tinkering with food. Learners
can either videotape their parents in the cooking or starring in the video
themselves. The final XP is supposed to be a capstone, in which learner can
learn to edit the separate pieces of videos they made in the previous XPs and
join them together into a final production, to be shared on one of their favorite
social media platforms.
Tinkering for fun and
learning
For me, every project I did in this course was a process of learning.
It was also great fun to me because I could always feel the jubilation of
success after trial and error, and after the conquering of fear at the unknown.
This project is no exception. It is in this process that authorship, purpose,
and deep understanding of the materials and phenomena are developed (Petrich et
al., 2013, p.55).” This is how Petrich, Wilkinson and Bevan argue for the
significance of tinkering. The process itself was rewarding. This must be the
fun of tinkering as is concluded by Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013): “We see
tinkering as a playful style of designing and making, where you constantly
experiment, explore, and try out new ideas in the process of creating something
(p.165).”
I also wish that students who choose to do the project I
design can experience such kind of fun. Theirs are going to be a process of being
actively engaged in gathering and assembling resources across time and space in
their attempts to design, edit and exhibit their creative work. In this
process, they will learn through and from a large variety of materials. It is expected
that they will develop a sense of curatorship over the tinkering of the various
kinds of materials, resources and media.
References:
Duckworth, E. (1972). The
having of wonderful ideas. NY: Columbia University Teacher’s College Press.
Petrich, M., Wilkinson K., & Bevan, B. (2013). It looks like fun, but are they learning?
In M. Honey & D. Kanter (Eds.), Design, Make, Play: Growing the Next
Generation of STEM Innovators. New York and Abingdon, Oxon., England: Routledge.
Resnick, M., & Rosenbaum, E. (2013). Designing for
tinkerability. In M. Honey & D.E. Hunter (Eds.), Design, make, play: Growing
the next generation of STEM innovators (pp. 163-181). London: Routledge.
Turkle, S., & Papert, S. (1992). Epistemological
pluralism and the revaluation of the concrete. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 11(1), 3-33.
Comments
Post a Comment