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Young Macdonald's Farm
Introduction
The Ocean of Know is a not-for-profit educational initiative that
has accepted the technological challenges of 21st Century learning.
It brings together a multi-talented and multi-disciplinary partnership
of educators, artists, scientists, engineers, and technologists,
establishing a unique knowing environment which will effectively
exploit the full range of today's interactive information technologies.
This group was formed in a shared concern: to provide dynamic
access to vast amounts of information in education settings increasingly
reliant on the relationship between learning and technology.
Our belief is that students and teachers must undergo fundamental
alterations in the way they assimilate and think about information
and to create both robust interfaces and applicable curricula
to address learning in the porous environment of the electronic
classroom. This transition demands awareness of a wide range of
histories, resources, implementations, and, most importantly,
strategies of integration to address a knowledge 'ecosystem' no
longer bound to traditions of rote learning. passive experimentation,
or limited resources.
The most significant challenges are to provide dynamic tools for
navigation, relevant means for extended research, and meaningful
interactions with both linked communities (including scientists,
educators, and artists) and direct experiences of consequential
interventions into operative learning. In a real sense we must
understand --and convey-- what we call "metainformation." Metainformation
can be thought of as information linked in an evolving system
where access, retrieval and deployment can be performed in on-going
and responsible ways. To achieve this kind of unifying approach,
we are actively effecting the development of both functioning
and experimental research into media literacy, relational learning,
hybrid classrooms, and active educational discourse to develop
what in increasingly referred to as 'inter standing,' the interdependence
between interaction and understanding.
It is Oceans' goal to bring the concepts of 'metainformation'
and 'inter standing' into mainstream learning through the development,
distribution and implementation of networked implementations that
link students and teachers to the Oceans of vast information in
cyberspace in ways that enrich understanding, provoke the imagination,
and demonstrate that communication technology can be utilized
in the development of dynamic collaborative environments.
Since its inception in 1992, The Ocean of Know has worked with
Mote Marine Laboratories, the New York Public school system, (ADD
OTHERS), to put into place curricula and access for the development
of science education. Working hand-in-hand with Bell Atlantic,
(ADD OTHERS), we evolved a tiered strategy utilizing video teleconferencing
and the world wide web to provide contexts in which science education
was less analytical than synthetic, more participatory than observational.
From this, and recognizing the need for more autonomous testbeds,
we are completing work on a small-scale but fully functional agricultural/aqua
cultural project, Young McDonald's Farm. Young McDonald's Farm
is an extension of the science learning model we developed for
marine biology. In collaboration with Bell Atlantic, The Ocean
of Know has secured a small farm in upstate New York, and is in
the process of initiating a program in which students can join
in a networked project to understand, monitor, and ultimately
be responsible for maintaining sustainable agriculture, plant
ecology, animal husbandry, and the environmental consequences
of farming.
The ultimate mission of The Ocean of Know is to provide an interface
into the experience of science in an era of telecommunications.
Our work in the development of learning tools, on-line curricula,
access to resources, and direct video conferencing links with
working scientists has demonstrated that distance learning is
a dynamic and functional component in education. Our continuing
research into on-line-learning provides both a discursive and
multi-disciplinary experiment and a no-holds-barred, hands-on
intervention into the materialities of communication and the very
real practices destined to be the foundation of education in the
21st century.
Daniel P McVeigh
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