cool - this kind of observation might help the analyst (you) figure out how much flexibility is available in the engagements of being a Whitney visitor, and how you might draw the lines for particular CoPs.

we often use the terms "relative newcomer" or "relative oldtimer" - that helps somewhat with this dilemma in the sense that now we can talk about expertise in the timescale of different types (trajectories) of participation. So, if we're talking about single visit participants, then those at the end of a day-long visit might be considered relative oldtimers

cool - this relates to our conversation in class (a week after you wrote this) about more local CoPs in relation to broader CoPs.

ah, ok, you were getting there...

but what if we think of membership and expertise not in terms of expertise in related to particular works of art (knowledge about specific objects) but adaptive, flexible ways of engaging with objects, whether they are familiar or unfamiliar? In relation to your case, you can be an expert fiction reader or even Strand customer, and when their stock changes (or even if they rearrange their organization system) I don't think that makes you a newcomer suddenly. Instead, you have resources for participating in a continued proficient way, which is different than how a newcomer would participate.

if you are thinking of the CoP as the art of music, then would you still call this visitor a newcomer? He might be a newcomer to the museum, or to looking at art, but he seems to identify strongly with the music - so might he already be a relative oldtimer in some CoP of music appreciation?

Alternatively, if he is a newcomer to art viewing, what kinds of access to participation does he have as an oldtimer in a CoP of music appreciation?

what kinds of questions? this might help us understand what kinds of learning is happening

from what to what, do you think?

this seems to be in contrast to the argument in the rest of the paragraph. what do you make of this? Also, how might this readily available resource (individually brought to the setting, but we can assume a large portion of visitors have them) change the concept of immediate apprehendability?

or if the visitor had particular forms of expertise, or maybe were oldtimer visitors, right?

I also noticed that on almost every floor there is something to look at straight ahead as the elevator doors open. This seems like deliberate design, but seems somewhat thwarted by the people you have to navigate around to get out of the elevator

this 5th page is, like, my favorite.

this is a good example/comparison for thinking about our FW question about intending to be or knowing about being a part of a FW. Can you engage in a CoP by accident (I think yes)? What ramifications might this have for learning? for the development/reproduction of the CoP?

I wonder how you decide what is more or less advanced in this situation - is it because some engagements are pre-requisites of others? Is it because more advanced suggests fuller participation or expertise in the CoP somehow? What does it mean for a total newcomer to participate in an advanced way while an oldtimer participates in only non-advanced ways?

This is a neat way to think about this observation. I've been guilty of spending more time with a text panel of a work than with the work itself. In this case, the engagements of the CoP you describe (seen it, thought about it, been curious...) are in direct interaction with the sculpture (and maybe other viewers), rather than expert information. This is a very particular kind of organization for learning/type of access to participation, totally opposite in the extreme from schooling.

cool - so you can think of progressively more "local" communities. You can imagine broadening out to "art museum visitors" or "art appreciators" or maybe a different slice, like "sculpture appreciators"

we can still use LPP in schools, right? It's just that the CoP and learning it illuminates is learning to be a student in a (e.g.) physics classroom rather than to be a physicist.

From a Latourian point of view we might think about how the photos allows participants to bring the object (with certain aspects amplified, and others reduced) to other settings to do further work on it.

Identities become important outcomes of participation in communities of practice in ways analogous to our notion that identities are formed in the process of participating in activities organized by figured worlds"

This seems like it could be a useful passage for our class question about CoP vs FW!!

seems like you've got 3 kinds of legitimate peripheral participation here - different ways visitors participate, by reading the wall text carefully, by using the headset audio tours, and and by skipping a bunch of things and heading straight for particular pieces. Don't be afraid to use the language. Then you can ask, what kinds of learning might these different forms of participation support? Or different kinds of identities? Or what kinds of further access to participation do different peripheral forms of participation support?

Could you think of that person as an "oldtimer" in relation to a particular piece, trying to recruit newcomers? What kind of an identity might this kind of "oldtimer" be developing?

from observing?

This could be something you might say about access to participation for non-English speaking newcomers

Try and be explicit about why when something surprises or interests you. Is this notable because you expect they'd want to look at everything? Why? Or another reason?

really nice to pay attention to different groups, not just one set

This seems like a really great set of questions to try out a figured world and identity lens.

This hints at a richer conception of what's to be learned - it's not enough to know how to go through the motions, but it is expected that it matters to know the origin of prayers, who and why they wrote them, etc. Meaning is made explicit and important. Probably in more ways than just this.

Maybe they are also resources as objects of observation?

This highlights for me that you might be a newcomer to this particular synagogue, or a newcomer to Orthodox Judaism.

What's the degree in variation between different synagogues? I imagine that there is a basic understanding of "how to do this," but what are the nuances that might be different from place to place? For example, in reform services, I know that different Cantors might sing things differently. I don't know anything about Orthodox services.

Cool. So, from an LPP perspective, you've got a similar setting to school, which is that it's there for the teaching and learning of a topic without actually being centered on the activity. In other words, people go there to learn about programming, not to do programming (and learn while they do it). So you've got two overlapping practices, I think: one is being a member of this community (which people have to learn how to do, and is clearly under constant negotiation, as shown by your first example post), and the other is programming. I say they are overlapping, because failure in participation in one makes participation in the other difficult, if not impossible.

i'm still not sure i know what "top submission" means? how does it get to be top?

cool - you could try and think about what the figured world of /r/learnprogramming is

Depending on how you look at the community, you might think of the participants with expertise in the object of learning (programming) as peripheral, while the learners are more central participants.

A place where the design of the environment is not totally responsible for structuring use/participation.

is this a quote from somewhere?

Useful detail for getting at access to participation

What if we broaden our view on what the goals of learning here might be? As you mentioned earlier, the sole purpose of the piece is probably not really getting water. In fact, this might be a less important purpose for it. So what else might be learned/experienced through interaction with/activity around the sculpture?

This is a neat quality - you can be experienced but still bad at it. So what else might develop with repeated visits to the fountain, if not necessarily expertise at drinking from it?

you mean "sculpture"?

This gets at the resources for learning - you enlisted the help of staff to find the books. How did you figure out the other issues?

Your learning, at least on this visit, seems to me to consist of the second activity, looking for/reading books. This seems to involve negotiating space/quietness with those who are using computers. How do you think your experience of this compared in relation to how you might imagine (or observe) an oldtimer do it? This can get at the question of "What access to participation do newcomers have, in comparison with oldtimers"

Seems like you've noticed two distinct (maybe overlapping) possibilities for activity here - using computers and looking for/reading books. This might also constitute 2 different communities of practice, right?

are you partly also making a distinction here between a broader community of yoga practitioners and those at Mindful NYU?

I like this interpretation - another take is that, if it's the same for everyone, it's not "genuine," whatever that means. But maybe that gives insight into a value of how to treat individuals here - you don't have to be treated differently to be important or special.

cool - i see the blocks as providing access to newcomers as well.

This is a nice observation of a configuration of disparate things that came together for you.

Is part of this question finding out what they really need to learn in order to successfully (whatever "success" means here) pull off the conference?

I wonder if you should also ask the complementary question, about how the volunteers help shape the community in different/new/evolving ways from year to year?

i wonder if our unit on elective learning will be helpful for you, even though volunteering is different than, say, learning to make model rockets in your spare time. Maybe you will also make some connections to the Kirshner youth activism piece.

So part of what you're saying is that you feel the resources to learn have been insufficient somehow.

it could be interesting to investigate the competitions as hybrid schooled/informal assessments

good one

This makes me think about the first class of the year for this course (Learning In and Out of Schools). Maybe you can help me brainstorm how to disrupt that for next time (year after next).

too bad! this brings up a question for me about membership - is it completely voluntary? what are the conditions of membership?

wow! i can't wait to see how/if this plays out

cool - maybe hybridity will become a useful concept for you

you point to some new technologies but you might think about being as detailed about older (and also less designed) resources for learning.

you can do interviews and also ask to follow people you know

One thing that you might think about is the learning involved in reading the map for the purposes of getting somewhere. It's not the same as reading a map for driving or walking somewhere.

neat question - probably differs in the details for different communities of practices.

Does the case of your mother inform this question?

nice comparison. As I've moved from city to city, my carrying of the subway card of that place has always felt like a cultural marker of my belonging; it symbollizes something different than (more than) its actual use as fare for transportation.

It seems like it's worth separating your viewers into the categories of subscribers and non-subscribing viewers (or whatever you'd call them). Is there a way to know this?

I think it would be more productive to think of the environment as the online environment - this is the "place" where people are engaging, and the one you have access to. You should keep in mind that while they do so they are also, physically in other places, sometimes simultaneously engaging in other activities that you can't know about. But you also want to think about what the online environment is like.

say more about what you mean here?

I'm not sure how this quotation applies here. I believe this passage was referring to theoretical debates about identities in relation to communities and practices as opposed to being a more individual-centered trait. So how do learning and developing identities amongst your viewers and subscribers inform us about the participation of haters or flamers?

Are there nuances within these two dichotomous categories? Are there different kinds of participation? Different kinds of commenting?

So say more about this. What is it about these folks that is "illegitimate"? Why do L&W say there is no such thing? How do you feel this phrase becomes relevant for this category of subscribers?

?

?

So these are characteristics of the CoP, but it doesn't comprise the CoP, right? Not everyone who has these characteristics are a part of the CoP. So what is the CoP really about?

They do use this modality, but can you say they "need" to?

I think this is particularly interesting because the goals are pretty different from someone who wants coffee. It's sort of backward, like they need a meeting space and are happy to have coffee too.

I like that you're asking questions based on your observation and thinking of ways to focus your future observations.

so, what do you make of this? What might this specific event tell you about this place? Or what further questions does it bring up for you?

what else do they do besides drink/eat?

good, it'll be important to continue to be open to having your assumptions or past experiences/interpretations disrupted.

This is neat also because there is sort of a global CoP of Starbucks patrons, but there may be slight local nuances.

the expressions on the faces of these people made me laugh out loud.

good thing this is only a semester project so you don't have to be totally comprehensive :) Seriously though, this is a good point. a major critique of politically charged conversations on the internet is this filtering, echo-chamber effect, so it is important that you acknowledge to some extent related communities.

I'd also guess there are flows or cycles of how "conversations" progress about news events?

alternatively, what about oldtimers who don't have many followers? Is this a possibility? Maybe to be a more full participant you need to have a lot of followers?

It's not necessarily what you're doing here, but I don't think you need to argue that anyone is doing "teaching" in order to argue that learning is happening. There's meaningful activity going on here, so people are learning. From an lpp lens (which you don't have to take in your project, but I sort of asked you to take for this FR) that's enough to say that learning is happening.

cool, two layers, sort of, of activity here. I'd argue this is true anywhere, but it's made more obvious on a digital platform somehow. However, appropriate ways to interact and using the technologies of communication (talk, gesture, etc) in face to face settings is not always the same across settings (e.g., whispering in some libraries)

ok, never mind. but do you have to treat this info with just a little bit of skepticism, at least for some accounts? how does one decide? Or maybe it doesn't matter for social relations in this community?

how can you tell?

initial ways of deciding/searching for what's relevant?

I wonder how we'd have to re-conceptualize "book shopping" as an activity when part of the activity includes sitting down on a bench and reading a book for 20 minutes or more. I feel like places like B&N discourage this kind of behavior (they want you to buy it before you read, right?). So maybe the activity that goes on here is more complex than my understanding of "book shopping," which includes browsing (sometimes), finding what you want, then going to the register to pay for it. Could be worth trying to flesh that out some.

or tourists?

The designers of the store must be deliberate about this

I like that you're starting to ask probing questions in relation to your observations or conjectures

This is a good consideration. Depending on what your research question(s) end up being you may want to stick to similar times or really vary when you visit.

wow, Jasmine must really want to get this point across...

I think this is an interesting case to try out with LPP because, in general, people don't choose whether or not to engage in the practice - it's a prerequisite for getting to class or the meeting or lunch or whatever.

good contrast

what does this look like?

say more about this. what, for you, do these indicate?

really nice detail

really nice figures

ok, but what is the curriculum for learning in the bookstore? Lave and Wenger would say that there is a "learning curriculum" - what is it like? What did you observe?

I think you're conflating doing with learning here. You're sort of saying what people needed to already know in order to successfully get their books. But what is the process of learning to get their books like? It's certainly related, but not the same thing.

This is a great way to do this - pick the concept from the reading, provide a quotation, and summarize your interpretation for us, then make a connection to your case.

I love that you have images of the store below. The way to do this is to reference each image you use within the text (figure 1., figure 2., etc) and then label the image with a caption. Then put the image as close to the relevant text as possible.

page number? I'm not totally sure how you're using this quotation here.

In Lave & Wenger, all activity is social practice. So how does this inform this case in particular?

I'm not sure what you mean by this

this part seems significant - what did you see people do to accomplish this?

how?

is this something you assume from your own experience or something observable?

What do you mean by this? What did you see?

I thought it was just alphabetical by author?

Compare this with the examples Resnick used

I'm not sure what you're saying here about age and tourists?

Make some comparisons with the cases Resnick uses to make her argument. How is this similar or different?

I'm not sure why you say this - are you saying that in school we learn to use tools? If so, I don't think that is Resnick's argument. I think the argument is that we are often expected to learn things without the tools that we might use out in the world (e.g., no calculators while taking math tests).

how do you know?

nice diagram!

can you make some specific comparisons?

from Becker's point of view there may be no curriculum - or we could think of it as a "learning curriculum," in the way Lave & Wenger describe

It's good to be generative - your next questions are all more about the library in general. Can you think of some ways to push further on your observations of the revolving doors?

nice to consider an alternative explanation

weird - so if the physical separation made by the revolving doors isn't the thing that interrupts the conversation, what is it about this change in activity that might be the source of the interruption? It's not like, for example, in an elevator people stop their conversations. Or do they? Under what circumstances?

This is a nice example of a good way to approach a field site for the first time. You had experience with revolving doors, but you weren't yet sure what you would notice and learn. You were relatively open to what you might discover. As you observed, you saw some patterns.

nice diagram

cool. another aspect of the social situation at Oren's that's different I think is that there's such a varied flow of people, all doing different things with different levels of experience, that one has to adapt to all kinds of possible scenarios (e.g. two customers talking across you in line, or getting the wrong order, or there being too many people in line to get to the end of the line from the door you came in)

In my mind there are (at least) 2 different versions of this. One is where a kid "gets it" first, or better, and helps a kid who doesn't "get it" yet. The second is two kids who are in a similar stage of "figuring it out," talking through it. These both could probably be mapped onto Oren's

we might call this "intergenerational" or something like that - relative oldtimers participating along with newcomers

I'm not totally sure I get the connection here.

Some of this (and part below) feel like interpretation based on your generalize experiences rather than really being grounded in your observations. What did you see in the Bookstore that seemed to constrain students to behave as prototypical?

This quote comes out of a section in Becker about Curriculum. What the analogy for the curriculum here? You hint at it, but are not explicit. How does it compare with what Becker says about curriculum in schools?

Because you saw it more frequently?

So how do you know this was what was going on. An alternative explanation: maybe she just wanted to browse?

For things like this (there are a couple other places above) where you know because of insider knowledge (rather than from your observation), you should say how you know it.

nice use of a specific example from the text.

after you use a quotation, make sure you provide the page number "...mental and physical performances mesh" (p. 13).

I like that you're explicit here that this is a conjecture you're making, rather than a claim about her intentions. good to differentiate, even in field notes/fieldwork reports.

it would help if you say why this was surprising to you, and also, since it was surprising, what did you observe them doing that, to you, made it easy for them? in other words, how did they manage to do it easily?

this is a neat observation. there's a sort of social momentum as well as physical momentum.

This paints a really nice picture of the scene

I really like this example. We could also think of the cups as a tool for customers, right?

good comparison

ah, so this is interesting. your observational notes above focused on customers, but there's also learning/activity going on with the staff

do you have evidence for this?

How does this compare with the cases that Resnick uses to make her point?

so what was the object of learning?

this is a really interesting "breakdown" (as Resnick describes on page 18). As you note, it provides additional insight, even for oldtimers' activity.

I think you can still learn something by watching "experts" or "oldtimers"

Bu wait, I don't think that Resnick's argument was that people don't ever gain general concepts or principles. Instead her argument is that "the packages of knowledge and skill that schools provide seem unlikely to map directly onto the clusters of knowledge people will use int heir work or personal lives" (p. 15). For Resnick I don't think the argument is that generalities can't be taught, rather that what we've chosen to teach in school (at the time, at least) don't map-- "Growing evidence of this kind points to the possibility that very little can be transported directly from school to out-of-school use" (p. 15). For her it's a mismatch problem, not one of teaching generalities.

I've tried to comment on this twice now and it keeps not showing up. can't tell if it's just not appearing right now, or if it's actually not saving...

Nice analysis - you dug into the details of the navigation case, tried out the comparison, and fleshed out the difference.

I like that you explain here why this behavior was puzzling to you

Anything from your observations that seems to back this up?

Yes, it seems like your observation was mainly about people's learning to use the tool itself (the machine). I wonder what Resnick would say about this.

Ah. this illuminates for me that there are 2 layers of learning here. One is learning about the machines themselves, but the other is about riding the subway. Some uncertainty in button pressing could be related to deciding what to buy OR figuring out how to buy something.

It would help if you say why this surprises you.

this is a nice descriptive list of the troubles that you saw folks encounter

nice job offering a summary of the "point" from Resnick

Resnick focuses on the distributed cognition example (can't be done by an individual alone), but she also hints at less "strong" versions of shared cognition ("each person's ability to function successfully depends on what others do and how several individuals' mental and physical performances mesh" (p. 13). In wonder what aspects of learning and cognition you see here that don't have to be done with others, but often is and works better that way?

neat. you're beginning to categorize classes of participants, which seems to coincide/intersect with phases of the phenomenon now

would be cool if, in the diagram, you drew a box to show us where the image illustrates, and also the perspective from which it was taken.

nice!

how could you tell?

In wonder if we might think of parts of the design of the doors as tools to help people learn how to use them. For example, the handles hint at which way the doors should rotate, and the compartment sizes hint that one person should go in at a time?

nice summary of how you interpret Resnick's argument.

nice contrast. i also think that some nuances of the goal might cause trouble in the doors example - what if one person is in a hurry but others are not?

I like how you're really pushing on the analogy here to see how the comparison might line up.

alternative conjecture: maybe it was just too hard to combat - if you're at the end of the line, you can't direct it in the other way

This is a breakdown of the sort that Resnick wrote about (page 18) - helps make visible to us (as analysts) the some of the tacit assumptions of the participants, and also gives us some insight into some of the adaptive behaviors necessary to be a skilled revolving door user.

Love how specific your observation got with movements of people's bodies.

I like this as a brief yet useful description for orienting us to the setting.

if we thought becker was being harsh about schooling...

!!!

http://life-slc.org/

structural reasons for failures and successes will be a focus this semester