Learning is Change

I want to be able to depend upon all of the spaces that I choose to learn and work in. I want to know that they are there when I need them. Would it be too much to ask that the Learning Management System for our online school work every day and not be the slowest web application that I have ever exeperienced?

When the expectation is that it will be slow… When I have to wait until 10 pm to see if I can actually get some work done… When I need to explain away all of the valid reasons to be frustrated at it… When just having it up and running is enough to be satisfied… Are those the points when it is just too much and you have to make as switch, never looking back upon what was all of your hard work and time.

Now, this is a rediculously specific example, but if I can make a more general point, I would say it is this: What is the point at which you realized that you have been sucker punched by your own decisions? When do you just suck up all of the things you have done and go in a completely different direction because the price of not doing anything is much worse than the pain of tearing yourself away from what has come before?

If something doesn’t change within the next day or so, that time is now.

I received an e-mail from an attendee of my educon presentation, The On Button: Instant and Always on collaboration. She was asking about one of the items in the presentation, in which I described adding an opml file (which was created by a Live Search OPML creator). Rather than simply e-mailing her and walking her through it, I decided to use ScreenToaster in order to do the nuanced topic a little more justice.

Here is the link to the tutorial.

Now, I have been a big fan of screencasting for a long time, but until tools like ScreenToaster and Screencast-o-matic become more common place, I don’t think that we will really start using it as a way of communicating our thoughts. When it is easy enough to demonstrate your learning, I think it is heinous not to create an archive of that learning.

I guess my biggest question is, how much learning has dissapeared because e-mails get deleted or the school period ends?

My next question is, what can we capture now that we couldn’t capture before?

Why shouldn’t students be able to show what they know, literally.

(Also, as an aside, I will be expanding on many of the ideas of my presentation over the next few weeks. Let me know if there is anything specifically that you would like to hear more about.)

One of the big revelations for me at educon was that creating things is the only way to sustain change. You cannot influence things to change. You have to create what you would like to see and make the change real for people.
 
Concretely, I mean that every student, every teacher and every administrator should not be allowed to leave their buildings with being able to truthfully say that they created something new that day. The following things do not count as creations:
 
1. Grades
2. Worksheets or any answers to lower level thinking questions
3. Meetings or notes from meetings
4. Email (unless it is cross-posted somewhere else)
 
Another reason why I believe that everyone should create something every day is because no one will be removed from learning if this happens. If you have to go through the process of creating something new, you have to also go through the process of demonstrating learning or of even learning something new. We would no longer have teachers who are out of touch with students or administrators that are out of touch with teachers. If we are all engaged in the act of creation, we are all speaking the same language.
 
We must, therefore, create an economy of creation as well. We must require creation as a requirement for participation in society. If we all now have the ability to publish quickly and create regularly, why are we so timid about requiring it of others. (That being said, anyone feel like poking holes?)
 
 
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Posted via email from olco5’s posterous

1. Believe in what you are saying.
2. Own what you know.
3. Reference the hope that you feel many times.
4. Reach.
5. Be able to back up your reaching and hope with the network that brought us all together.

So, I have been the youngest person in the room ever since I finished college. This is both a blessing and a curse.

It is a blessing in the fact that I can claim that I never taught without blogging. It is a curse in the fact that my life experience is so sufficiently small that it seems almost inconcievable that I couldn’t have intelligent ideas about how to change schools. No matter how much I believe in what I am saying or how well I flesh out my ideas, my inability to look older is still a major flaw.

The best part, however, and the reason for my post is that because of the way I look, speak and write, people tend to push me harder than others. I have had more push back on my thoughts than any other time, and I have lost more sleep this weekend in thinking through the issues that I most care about.

It is beautiful to be challenged on the merit of your work.

My session went well, but it only went well because I was able to put ideas out there and see if they stood on their own. I want more of this. I want to be able to have more opportunities to react to well developed thoughts and questions.

This weekend, to me, was about taking the time to let our work stand for itself. This weekend was about thinking about what is going on in our schools and seeing if it holds water. It is about pushing back from all sides and seeing what is pushed up in the process.

The question I really want to ask is this: How can we ensure that all perspectives are pushing equally? How can we get all of the voices in the room to test what we are talking about? If we only have some people pushing, ideas get pushed down. If we only question the ideas we don’t agree with, the ones that we value will never grow.

So, whatever you read on my blog, tell me I am wrong.

Push me to be better. I want to be better.

I will be keeping my notes here, mostly, but you can also follow my twitter stream below for more notes. Check out the EduCon wiki for more info.

All of the best collaborations I have been a part of have started off with a lot of questions. Not “how do we get it done” questions, but rather questions that yearn for something more, questions that require you to truly envision something that has never existed before and then breathing it into being. Perhaps that is a little bit high minded for the type of collaboration I would like to do today, but I don’t think so.

I think that we can start with questioning the very nature of collaboration, the ways in which we communicate and come together. I believe that we can challenge the format and flow of our information. And in the process, I believe that we can create an instant and always-on type of collaboration that has never existed, until we all decide that it is worth building.

So, what are the questions that we would like to answer today? Well, I have a few to start:

1. What types of collaboration would you like to have at your fingertips by simply clicking once with your mouse (without first having to build a personal learning network for a few months)? (Instant)
2. What types of collaboration do you miss out on because they are not in your workflow (or you simply don’t have time)? (Instant and Always-on)
3. How do you create long lasting collaborations (or at least ones that outlast your involvement with them)? (Always-on)
4. How does the format and timeliness of information change the possibilities of collaboration? (Instant)
5. How do you get information, people, and resources to come to you? (Always-on)

In answering these questions and many others that you have come up with, I think we will come to an understanding of the nature of instant and always-on collaboration. In the hopes that we have something to grab ahold of in this discussion, I have outlined what I believe are the tenants of getting collaboration to be as simple as an on-button:

(All of these tenants assume one thing: All collaboration is made up of single acts that are held within a single space and a single time. Together these acts of collaboration make up the process of connecting with others, discussing ideas, and creating something new.)

1.    All Logins that can be eliminated, should be.
2.    Everything that can be aggregated, should be.
3.    Everything that can be archived and tagged, should be.
4.    No new online space (blog, wiki, portal, etc.) should be created that cannot leverage existing spaces.
5.    Workflow is king. Any space that doesn’t play well with the tools that people already use, is worthless.
6.    Quiet the incessant chatter of the web. Focus only on conversation and voices that matter.
7.    All spaces must include specific information for specific stakeholders.
8.    All spaces must be able to accommodate an infinite number of stakeholders.
9.    Action should be inevitable, and membership should be impossible.
10.    You should be obsolete in your space immediately.

Discuss.

Extra resources:

• Bitty Browser Plugin
• WordPress MU Plugin Commander
• Link for tagging on Scribd
• Link for tagging on Slideshare
• Link for tagging on youtube

Idea one: The purpose of school is not to churn out a finished product. Innovation doesn’t come from a place of completion.
 
Idea two: If we mean 99 percent of the places that we call school, I would say there is no purpose.
 
The purpose should be to be THE place to go and create, learn, and build real things.
 
Idea three: The purpose changes. Does the purpose take into consideration of all cultures and ideas. It can’t just be the transmission of values, other than inquiry.
 
Idea four: The purpose of school is to create community.
 
The best thing you might be able to do in a day is getting the students to talk to one another.
 
Idea five: The purpose of school is to learn how to communicate.
 
You have to be able to present arguments and convince people that you know what you are talking about.
 
Calibrate what students know as important, difficult, and original.
 
Idea six: The purpose of school is to expose kids to people who are actually doing what is possible.
 
Perhaps it is in finding out how things really work. Perhaps it is in not knowing everything. Perhaps it is in knowing exactly what you want to do with your life.
 
Idea seven: The purpose of school is to be the great equalizer. But the system can’t keep up.
 
We need to fix it so that schools are what they should be.
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Posted via email from olco5’s posterous

I am on my way to educon 2.1 right now, looking out into the night (don’t worry, I am using my phone in airplane mode). For some reason there are no clouds out there tonight, and all I can see are the bright lights of cities, clustered together and beautiful. What I am thinking about as my mind is still trying to wrap itself around the conversation I will be leading on saturday, is that the lights of a city look like the networks that I dream about.
 
I want networks that are far reaching and bright. I want to be able envision the whole thing all at once or focus on a single connection. I want to hop from network to network. I want to see far off into the horizon and know that there are other networks thinking about the same things I am.
 
I want the network to be on every time I look, glowing more radiantly in the node that need my attention right now. I want knowledge to run around my network like the people push on out toward their well ordered lofts in the city and winding single-family house lined roads in the suburbs. I want my network to bring me in for a landing every once in a while, grounding me in what is really so important: taking the time to get to know an individual and seeing them as more valuable than any amount of community created or knowledge gained.
 
(I know this post is pretty flowery, but I am away from my family for the first time since my son was born. I may be a little wistful on the blog for the next few days.)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Posted via email from olco5’s posterous

I am on my way to educon 2.1 right now, looking out into the night (don’t worry, I am using my phone in airplane mode). For some reason there are no clouds out there tonight, and all I can see are the bright lights of cities, clustered together and beautiful. What I am thinking about as my mind is still trying to wrap itself around the conversation I will be leading on saturday, is that the lights of a city look like the networks that I dream about.
 
I want networks that are far reaching and bright. I want to be able envision the whole thing all at once or focus on a single connection. I want to hop from network to network. I want to see far off into the horizon and know that there are other networks thinking about the same things I am.
 
I want the network to be on every time I look, glowing more radiantly in the node that need my attention right now. I want knowledge to run around my network like the people push on out toward their well ordered lofts in the city and winding single-family house lined roads in the suburbs. I want my network to bring me in for a landing every once in a while, grounding me in what is really so important: taking the time to get to know an individual and seeing them as more valuable than any amount of community created or knowledge gained.
 
(I know this post is pretty flowery, but I am away from my family for the first time since my son was born. I may be a little wistful on the blog for the next few days.)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Posted via email from olco5’s posterous