The Story of Thomas, Developing Social Confidence
This entry focuses on the story of Thomas and how participation in an IF-style discussion group can help a student develop the social relationships s/he needs for success in college.
Jul
2009
16
Jeff Prudhomme
Jul
2009
16
Our Activities at the Summer Institute
This entry spells out the major activities at the Summer Institute that will focus on learning the discussion process and practicing effective discussion facilitation.
Jul
2009
8
Exploring Consequences to Revise Possibilities
This entry describes the third stage of the IF discussion process: using the exploration of consequences to help revise the policy possibilities.
Jul
2009
4
(More than) 36 Hours in Madison, Wisconsin
On the lighter side of the Summer Institute, I just happened to notice this little NY Times article on "36 Hours in Madison Wisconsin" and thought you might want to give it a look. Of course Pete Shively and Adolf Gundersen, both long time denizens of Madison, can...
Jul
2009
1
Taking a Conceptual Approach?
This post gives some examples of what we mean by taking a more conceptual approach in your discussions.
Jun
2009
28
Tacit Knowledge vs. Intellectual Technologies
There's an interesting section on "Thinking as Doing" in Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft that can help shed light on what we're trying to convey in our approach to collaborative and developmental discussions (my earlier post on Crawford's book is here)....
Jun
2009
24
Generating Possibilities
This post describes the second of the three stages in the Interactivity Foundation's discussion process: generating and developing some contrasting possibilities to respond to the big questions about the area of concern raised in the first stage of the discussion process.
Jun
2009
18
Getting the Process Started
Our focus in the blog and in the Summer Institute is on exploring connections between the Interactivity Foundation's "sanctuary discussion process" and the classroom. In earlier postings I've talked about the character of our approach to collaborative and...
Jun
2009
16
My Young Friend, Jay Stern
I'd like to offer a brief word of farewell to commemorate the passing of a dear friend and mentor, Jay Stern. Jay passed away this past Saturday, June 13, 2009. He was 95 (you can find his obituary here). Jay was, among many other things in his long life, the...
Jun
2009
10
What are Sanctuary Discussions?
In the Interactivity Foundation (IF) we often talk about "sanctuary discussions" or "the IF discussion process" in pretty interchangeable ways. In this post I'll describe some of the key features of of what we mean by calling them sanctuary discussions.