Helping myself out… by asking for help.

So I haven’t blogged for a little while because of all of the work I have been doing for our district’s online school, eDCSD. I intend to blog that out more fully in a separate post, but now I am at the TIE 2008 conference and I have some time to think about how everything (seriously everything) is fitting together.

Teachers are sitting around me trying to figure out Photo Story. They are listening to a man who knows something about building learning communities through new media and web 2.0 resources. This is right up my alley. Or, at least it used to be. I used to love listening to hear people talk about what to use in the classroom in order to create a more collaborative environment. I talk about it when I present. I demo visual tools (although mostly of them are web-based) for creating environments. Why doesn’t this mean something to me?

I feel different than I did last year when I talked to Bud Hunt, Will Richardson, and Karl Fisch. I don’t feel like I am a part of this conversation right now. I feel a part of a different conversation, but I don’t know exactly where it is happening.

I want to be a part of the conversation that is about massive creation. I want to be a part of creating something that lasts, not a singular experience. I want to feel connected to all of the people I talk to, forever. I don’t want to meet anyone new who doesn’t want to share and create with me. Why can’t it be easy enough to simply add people and create with them. Why is it not possible to look across the edubloggosphere and say, “you and me, let’s go.”

I want to be a part of that conversation. I want a creation station for all of us. Where is it, though? Where is the learning playground? I want to play.

So, I guess I will throw it out to you. Where is your playground right now? Where are you going to simply create learning with others (please don’t tell me that the most learning is happening simply through twitter… I don’t think I am alone in my for need something more robust to actually create conversations that last and that I can keep coming back to). Anyway, any suggestions for where my learning community is?

What we need from “the district.”

The Principal of the Online School in my School District asked me a really interesting question regarding the growth of our vision within the district and the region. She asked, “What are the 2 or 3 big pieces that we need from the system/district?”

I was taken aback by this question. Is it possible that my district really wants that kind of input? Can I really influence the future just by asking for it?

This question begs us to examine what we want to ask of our institutions. Many times we just assume that our institutions are not interested in what we have to say or what we would like to create, but perhaps they just need to know what it is that we need. So, this is what I have been thinking about:

What are the 2 or 3 big pieces that I need from “the system” in order to create the Authentic Learning Environments I have been writing about, podcasting about, trying to create, and aching to find?

• 
• We need teachers who do not have to pile technology-rich learning experiences on top of their every day classrooms. We need teachers who are hired to simply do the work of creating a ripe environment for students online (or are at least shared with a brick and mortar in some kind of ratio that makes sense).
• 
• We need to be able to rewrite the rule book a little on what tools are okay to use in classes. It should not be a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. It should be a conversation about which technologies really do produce the most authentic learning for the most students.
• 
• Ideally, I want access to a learning spa, where teachers can come in and learn all that they can about teaching online without the fear of being rushed or having to regurgitate the information for students. I want a place that will create culture among students, a place to do projects with kids that will get them comfortable with the tools they will need in order to take courses online. I want a place where teachers are encouraged to create a community, to have a shared vision, to stay informed, and to create something new. It would be nice if that place existed as a brick-and-mortar entity and not just as a consistent webinar meeting.

What would you ask for if you knew your district was listening?

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Live Blogging With AHS students.

On
Friday, I had the distinct pleasure of listening to some of the most
unique voices in the discussion over Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind.
These voices did not come from an “expert” being paid thousands of
dollars for a breakfast engagement. They did not come from a literary
analyst who picked apart Pink’s prose with perfect clarity and wit.
They came from Arapahoe high school students that were eager to create a conversation, expansive and intense. Check out the discourse for yourselves.

We
took a look at one of Pink’s chapters specifically: Story. I especially
liked how the conversation evolved over the course of the hour that we
blogged. It seemed to start from a place of pure story, then it evolved
into something about the future of the workplace. Then we got very
theoretical. We started talking about how story can influence memory
and how memory influences story. Even though Pink devotes quite a bit
of time to this idea, I really like the way the students were able to
incorporate it into their thinking. It really got me to start
reflecting on what the purpose of crafting learning environments can
be.

If we create an environment that is ripe enough to learn
within then we are creating an experience; we are crafting the story of
that learning. In turn that learning becomes a memory, one that will be
told over and over as a story if it is good enough. So, in truth, we
are trying to create learning memories for students, ones that they
will hold onto long after they have forgotten the names of their
classmates or what day of the week it was on. We want to create
memories that are so lasting that the events take on mythical
proportions, they start living on as stories of their own.

Is
there a way of analyzing the ways in which we tell stories about our
high school experience to our friends from that time period? Is there a
way to know whether or not those experiences were learning based or
extraneous (not that they were bad things, mind you)? My question to
those students, and to anyone who reads this blog is what is a learning
memory that you have? What is the one experience in an authentic
learning environment that you will never be able to forget?

(Special thanks to Karl Fisch for setting up this amazing opportunity. More of this kind of collaboration and conversation is needed desperately.)