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September 19, 2003
2nd Grade Community
Posted by Ross Mayfield
At Back to School night for my daughter I was pleased to learn the theme of the year for second graders was community. Of course, I geeked out on some of the mechanisms.
Every student has a red card and a green card in their desk drawer. When they do something wrong or right, they have to display it on their desk. There is also a chain of paper clips hanging from a tack on the wall. When the class does something great, they add a paper clip, when its something not-so-great, they take one away. If the chain reaches the floor they get to have an ice cream party. And, get this, a student can choose if they want a card or a paper clip. At first, nobody chose to take away paper clips. The first ones who did, for personal benefit, were chided (something second graders are pretty good at). But lately a communal empathy has arisen where kids encourage demoting the community when an individual really needs it, at the detriment of ice cream.
Other neat things included having them draw social network graphs of their friends. All hub and spoke in the first iteration. There is also a big collage of their community, the streets, buildings, people. One of the items is a Post It with a misspelled Nordstroms. It is Palo Alto, after all.
I won't bore you with other details, just proud of my daughter learning about the world she lives in. Would be cool to see tools adapted for this experience. I am volunteering for the computer lab again this year, planning on introducing them to a wiki. Start them early.
Comments (8)
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1. Bill Seitz on September 19, 2003 2:04 PM writes...
Since my oldest is 2 years younger than that, maybe my perspective is off, but this seems like some sort of groupthink social control to me.
It's "good" for their to be clear outcomes for certain behaviors, and it's "good" for the kids to own that. But the rest of it smells like a group Skinner box.
(My reaction, of course, may communicate more about *me* than anything else.)
Permalink to Comment2. Clay Shirky on September 19, 2003 2:12 PM writes...
The paper clip/card thing is fantastic! Would be cool to do a collection of childrens' games and tools for social environments.
The communal deflection of negative individual behavior thing reminds me of the great Resnick piece on the signal loss on eBay caused by lack of negative individual feedback, even when warranted:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/presnick/8121.html
We wear clothes and carry phones, but deep down, we're all just monkeys with an attachment to the cohort that overrides individual accountability.
Permalink to Comment3. Liz Lawley on September 19, 2003 3:54 PM writes...
Okay, I'm confused by what you mean by "they can choose if they get a card or a paper clip."
Permalink to Comment4. Clay Shirky on September 19, 2003 4:13 PM writes...
I think (Ross, correct me if I'm wrong) that it means that if I do something bad, I can either put a Red card on my desk (personal blame) or I can take a paperclip off the chain, moving the ice cream party one day further away.
When I do something bad, there's some social pressure to take the card instead of the paper clip, as taking the paper clip identifies my action as a group transgression, for which the group suffers. However, the flip side is that if I take a paper clip instead of a Red card, I don't feel so bad personally.
It sounds like Ross's daughter's class has adopted an ethos where that sort of diffusion of blame is tacitly accepted by the group, because it turns the chain into a public resource for blame diffusion, even at the expense of postponing the ice-cream party.
This is is the core advantage of bureaucracies -- mistakes fall upon the chainmail of linked responsibility and are deflected, rather than falling on, and wounding, an individual.
Permalink to Comment5. Ross Mayfield on September 19, 2003 4:15 PM writes...
Liz, Someone does something good or bad. Then that someone gets to choose to positively or negatively impact themselves or the community. Cards impact individual assessment, paper clips can lead to ice cream.
Bill, I think the point is that it all of our actions could impact our community and understanding tradeoffs and their iterations doesn't lead to group think.
I have a friend who is developing a massive K-12 online community. Among the trade offs is determining a constitution to balance regulations and belief systems of diverse school districts to reduce abuse by students and still be open to free expression Ideally feedback loops would exist for the students to police themselves, like the card/clip game or wiki-like assumed trust. Unfortunately some oversight and control is warranted too.
Permalink to Comment6. Ross Mayfield on September 19, 2003 4:21 PM writes...
Clay, here are some facets of monkeys in a post by Richard Gayle
Permalink to Comment7. Ross Mayfield on September 19, 2003 4:26 PM writes...
Apparently, its Monkey Day:
http://www.corante.com/livingcode/20030901.shtml#52797
http://interconnected.org/home/2003_09_14_archive.shtml#106400128862908519
Permalink to Comment8. Bill Seitz on September 19, 2003 8:19 PM writes...
I can maybe understand the mechanism where, if I do something good, I can donate that chit to the group toward ice cream. Though that seems like a peer pressure tax.
But I really don't understand why, if I do something bad, I should be given the option by the adult-set rules to penalize the whole group. (Under *no* definition did *I* have sex with that woman.)
It also seems twisted that the individual reward/penalty is intangible (card = approval/disapproval), while the group analog is tangible (ice cream).
I can sense that this is a many-leveled game, which I suppose has various parallels to the RealWorld, but it also seems a bit fixed. Which is also perhaps applicable to the RealWorldToday, but not something I want to (a) expose my precious offspring to any sooner than necessary, or (b) treat as "normal" "external" "just-the-way-it-is" reality.
But it's interesting to talk about.
Or, we could create 2 teams for artificial competition. http://www.interventioncentral.org/htmdocs/interventions/gbg.shtml
Permalink to CommentThen *Duplicate* penalties and rewards between the individual group. You screw up, you get a red card and one paper clip goes away. Let's call this the HarryPotter model...