Opening space, transfer-in, small spaces

Bernd Weber weberb at gmx.at
Sun Jul 14 07:44:55 PDT 2002


Dear Glory,

I think, between 1980 and 1995, after coming to normal school with my
alternative school experience I did quite a lot of what you would
nowadays (nearly ;-) call open space, when I was a science teacher at
university and secondary school.
I will just start to write about my approach, you will see, if
something could be useful for you, okay?

What I basically did, was the following.

1) I brought all the information about the GIVENS into the classroom:
Educational law, rule of the house of the school, Educational
Objectives of all levels (general of the school type,specific of the
subject, more specific of the year...), curriculum,  youth laws (no
alkohol etc.) and installed a table called "Information pile A:
GIVENS"

I brought educational material of different levels (very practical,
very theoretical) in any case in a rich variety/heterogenity into the
classroom and filled some tables with it, called "Information pile B:
OPPORTUNITIES".
I let them sniff around for an hour in both "information piles"

Then spoke an hour about the system of givens and especially about
the fact, that the school laws are constructed like all laws: general
objectives are more important than specific ones. And we developped
together a collection of informal rules and tabus, not written in
laws, which we better should not violate, if our alternative science
classroom happening should go on for a while. This was then the
defensive part "ACTION PRINCIPLES" (The constructive part OUR OWN
LEARNING/WORKING PRINCIPLES was a poster with nothing on it at the
time)

Then I informed, that they would have some hours just for sniffing
around, than they would have to make an informed choice about what
they would like to to. Till then they could use the marketplace to
prepare such a decision and find other with whom they would work
together for the next phasis of several hours.

There was a marketplace with various posters
a) spaces to write "I would like to do"....
b) "I allready know something about..."
b) "I have more material about..."
c) "I know people who know more about..."
d) "I know interesting places to go, related to..."
e)  "flashes of my/our great findings" (a design of a bright light
bulb)
f) Presentation events anouncements
g) Findings on the level of "OUR OWN WORKING/LEARNING PRINCIPLES"
g) A big plan of the years items according to the school laws, where
they could highlight areas or items they would like to treat (later
on, this was substitutet by a new one to fill out, what they were
working on, ...)

After sniffing around for some hours there was a free selection of
teams. At first, for a very small "test-learning project", then there
were rounds of bigger and bigger projects, being the last one work of
several weeks until two months. So it was clear from the beginning,
that there would be growing commitment to the work until the end.

Starting with the test-learning project:
After a week, they would have to deliver either a 1page poster or a
1page paper (A4) with their findings and prepare a visualisation or
just distribute their copies to their collegues. The one who can
garantee the finishing of the report is the only one who has to stay
permanently within the group and is team-leader until the work is
finished. Without team-leader, no group. Whoever wants to leave the
group is free to do so after a debriefing where he/she has to deliver
the material to this team-leader and explain his/her intermediate
findings.
At first they had to make a consensual list of questions they wanted
to answer during their project (Our Central burning question/other
interesting questions) Then a working plan where they defined, what
they wanted to do, how it is related to the Curriculum how they would
do it, the level of quality/finish of their product, what support
they would need and what mark/points they wanted to achieve. This was
discussed with the teacher and the final version fixed as a mutual
teaching/learning contract.

So they started. The groups defined creative names related to their
themes and produced a big Logo-Poster at the wall behind their table.
People from outside were invited into the classroom.
Groups went outside the school to gather information (this was quite
an organizational problem with the younger ones, fortunately there
were often interested students aroung who could help) etc.

At the beginning of each hour (if it was not possible to group hours,
because this was too much stress for the school administration) or
each group of hours, there was a classroom circle with "mutual
actualization" NOT treating results, but often announcements, that
there was new material available at the table of this group, problems
they encountered. The teacher mainly asked if there was new material
for the marketplace posters. During the group working time he did not
give answers to their questions, but tried to find additional
material and/or contacts who could do.
...
There were of course some controll inspections, because the chaos of
movements and the working sounds impacted the invironment, but since
most teachers never care for the legal GIVENS in their routine
trance, it was always a backshot because it became very rapidly
clear, that only the other science classes did not fullfil the
curricular GIVENS.

Hope there are ideas for you in this pile

Bernhard
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On Tue, 9 Jul 2002 07:44:04 -0400, Glory Ressler wrote:

I'm interested to see how we can create some open space in the
classroom! What might you do? (all ideas will be gratefully respected
and considered) :-)

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