Communal living

I never realized just how important community was to me until my wife
and I asked our best family friends to come and live with us while
they are saving up to buy a house.
 
For many years I have written about online communities as being an
essential part of authentic learning. Yet, I have never lived in such
close quarters to another family, and thus did not know how much is
learning by being a part of a close-knit real-life community.
 
Daily I learn what actions by my children and theirs “really mean”. I
now know why personal space has so much value. I know what to expect
from our community and what my community expects of me.
 
The reason for this post is that it has gotten me thinking about our
need for a nurtured real-life community that supports everything we
attempt to change in education. While I would like to think that the
twittersphere is all that I need for support and community, I need the
people that I can look straight in the eye and brainstorm the greatest
learning activity with.
 
I guess I will just state this idea as a challenge to myself: if I am
not cultivating my real community as hard as I am doing so for my
online community, I will never be able to accomplish all of the things
I would like.
 
Or, to put it another way:
 
The number of people you can touch with your work depends upon how you
work with the people you can literally touch. (Although, that sounds a
little creepier than I wanted.)

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What is it now?

There is a syndrome that I see from many of the people that I work
with, and at many times, it I can be guilty as well. It happens when
someone asks a question or has a request of you. They have a simple
thought that they would like to discuss with you, but instead of
answering, you put it off or say that you don’t have time for their
tangent. You talk about all of the other things that you have to do
and you just don’t have time for their little project.
 
While this may be strictly true, you are shutting any opportunity to
advance your relationships with those people who ask or your skills
with the tools that are required for the request.
 
I know this sounds that I am advocating for dropping everything you
are working on to fix other’s problems, and I guess I kind of am.
 
If we have programs in schools that are called drop everything and
read for kids, I think we may as well have programs in schools called
drop everything and help for adults. I believe that if the culture
within a school or online space is based upon helping others to be
better or to know more, it is the only way to truly institutionalize
life-long learning.
 
When I shut people and their unique requests for help out (or put them
off indefinitely) I find that I stagnate. It take some going out to
help someone else in order to truly lean something new about what I
need to work upon.
 
I guess that I learn more and more that all learning is connected.
Even if I am not researching online schools when I am helping someone
to forward their email, it doesn’t mean that it won’t eventually end
up helping in the long run.
 
I guess all of the things in my brain really do have a long tail, and
it isn’t until it wraps around something important that I notice.

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Pride in resistance to change.

I had a meeting today about transitioning to a google apps for your domain installation from an exchange server.
 
This sounds like a pretty easy sell, actually. It will save something like $13,500 a year. In the end it was, but not for that reason. It was only easy because admin didn’t have to change their workflow in any way. They would still be able to use outlook exclusively. It would only be the “back end” that would shift. This idea took me totally by surprise.
 
It wasn’t because I want people to completely shift the ways in which they do things just because I think it is better. It took me by surprise because it basically meant that the admin did not want to learn anything that they did not already know. That alone makes me sad. The idea that the current way of doing things is ever “the way” of doing things strikes me as defeatist. I don’t think I could handle setting an institution based on that model. Perhaps that does work for some people, but I don’t see how.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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The Ripe Environment: The Most Powerful Learning

The Ripe Environment: Most Powerful Learning Podcast [ 12:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (174)

Although the podcast (which was somehow not recorded because I had the device set for line-in rather than mic… I am quite mad about it actually) for this post explains this prerequisite for The Ripe Environment pretty well, I would like to further outline it for those of you who don’t have 15 minutes to listen (or who can’t imagine all of the things I would have said, had the microphone actually worked).

I would like to start by saying that I do not actually have any problems with conferences, meetings, or workshops. In fact, they are one of the premier places that The Ripe Environment can exist. However, my contention is that The Ripe Environment cannot simply stay in that space. It has to transfer over into the times when no one else is around. It has to transfer into the individual mind, so that your own mind is a Ripe Environment for Authentic Learning. I know that probably sounds a little hokey, but I believe that there are many ways of thinking things through, some of which are more productive than others.

On the podcast (which, once again, is only in your imagination at this point) I use the metaphor of class time and conferences being a typewriter. Conferences exist in one particular place and time, as does the typewritten words on a page. They cannot be copied and disseminated in the ways that a blog post or wiki edit can be. There is something quite beautiful about words existing in only one place and an experience only being a singular event. Even in the capture of the backchannel, live-blogging or streaming of an experience, the experience held in one time. However, the true learning happens when one reflects upon the process, upon the environment.

The Ripe Environment does not end when the session is over. It never ends. The learning extends over the boundaries when it is made personal. When the singular experience is built upon with an eye toward a personal set of circumstances. Learning occurs when a resource is appropriated for your classroom. Learning occurs when a link is made (hyperlink or a synaptic link) to a website or person. Learning is occurs when an e-mail is sent off requesting a follow up or an invite to a google document is sent out.

These moments are not held in time. They are ongoing. They make sure that the Environment stays ripe rather than withers.

I turn 23 tomorrow.

It sounds so young, even to me. Perhaps it is the CSAP in me that has got me thinking about my goals, but I have some enormous expectations for myself. Right now I can’t think of any other way to be.

Expectations before I turn 25 (not hopes, not dreams; things that I know will happen):
1. I will have a child.
2. I will have a master’s degree.
3. I will have a book published.
4. I will have a salary that makes my family’s life comfortable.
5. I will have a cd pressed.