lab connections

first a person, then a town

2012-01-30T07:20:00.000-08:00

Starting in on the second half of our quiet revolution.. how do you change a town?
beginnings of visible remnants..

See more here if you like.

Hoping to continue an ongoing conversation about change of mindset..
perhaps for now, Tuesday evenings, 7-9, at Suede.
[pics of last meet up there. location.]

fyi: just finished Simon Sinek's Start With Why and Clay Christensen's Innovative University. Currently reading: Susan Cain's Quiet, the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking.

refocus

2012-01-21T10:27:00.000-08:00

why

View more presentations from monika hardy

What do you think? This is via Simon Sinek, who we reference in the first chapter of the be you book.

bif dream

2012-01-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

I'm pulling together a doc, in order to garner funds for our game-on phase. As this is a short term (albeit huge) request, I'm thinking we will be looking for donations mostly outside Loveland.
As a person most often against money requests, this one actually sits well with me, as it represents our value placement. This is about a space, mental and physical, for us to listen to our people, without an agenda. The space we're currently looking at is the 3rd floor of the Rialto Bridge.

Please feel free to chime in in whatever way suits you.

For those interested in keeping up with the exponentiated speed of game on, I will try to update here more often, and we will continue our Thursday night, 7pm meetings (place tba on a weekly basis) until that too, perhaps, changes.

Jarod Polis is coming to the lab Feb 13. When I last met him, I had several people help me think aloud. Here is the doc for that.
The PBS film crew will be back Jan 23 and 24. This time they will be focusing on Sierra, capturing the day in the life.

game on

2012-01-18T07:09:00.000-08:00

a quiet revolution.

dream

2012-01-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

{top of rialto bridge..?}
perhaps a headquarters/homebase,
perhaps bif-ish,
for the innovation lab - that is currently a mindset....
[the be you house as a wellness center of sorts, detox, safe place, where we find out the physical/psych spaces that free you up for your potential in cognitive discomfort, for alluring you to be you.]

the lab as a mindset for now, because we believe it shouldn't be a mecca, but in everyone. but perhaps an innovation factory/lab, to house the following...

a talkspace for community - where we learn to listen without an agenda. where we learn it's ok to talk, to not talk, to listen, to lurk... {suede and feed and grain as other options}

people can

physically come, and speak up or not,
catch a recording after, so they keep up on the convo
skype/hangout to participate from their home or office or?
follow a livestream.
offering the opportunity to lurk and/or to participate as they wish.

ie: i can hangout or skype in people from all over (this ability has given me voice, made me feel i'm not crazy, not alone, lurking was/is huge to me), perhaps we can hangout or skype in people down the street, that aren't quite sure about what we're doing.. they just want to listen in, or maybe they'll can't make it to the physical space...perhaps the web, global connections, can teach us how to better communicate in our community. it's not borders or distance keeping us from each other, but something is..
so imagine 50, or 25, or 100 people (different or the same) gathering every week in this space, but over 90% of loveland participating in the convo, which means participating in creating us, because of what tech allows, via hangout, skype, livestream, archive....

it's also a good neutral collab space for arts ace, city, district, homeless, charities, etc
and good space to share out what we are doing.. to scale across... via google hangout(edtechtalk), internet tv(icosa), etc,

a conduit to communities of practice - jumpstarted via hOURschool
{for now - but that would move to pi lab of future, old music store}

a business for resources
house for angel investors... micro loan... presumed abundance

p. 333 of innov uni...our quiet revolution started by wondering what would happen if we turned the city over to kids.. took away their compulsory curriculum, 7 hours a day, and let them find their own problems...christensen writes of biy utah's success - matching up with mit - even though it had no where near the resources, because they used their greatest resource, the students.what if this space becomes the office of the city, as turned over to the kids.. not running the city, but facilitating the city through the time they have in the day, the govern funding, and their brilliant minds being set free to do that which they can't not do.we'll find, we have enough, more than enough, abundance.we're currently just missing it.

how to do more with less... giving it to the people (this isn't just about kids.. there are just a lot of people that happen to be held up in school buildings getting ready for tests, brilliant people, that could change a town)

what gap?

2012-01-03T11:22:00.000-08:00

Full disclosure: am certainly practicing useful ignorance here.

[I keep reading full disclosure in people's posts/comments/etc. Was wondering what it felt like to be a part of something that you felt you had to state a full disclosure. Maybe that's the point. Full disclosure. So much that we don't have to state anything. Or maybe it's good practice.. a heads up. I don't know. Here's my heads up to you.. I know I don't know. Great chance that I'm wrong. I'm using my ignorance to get better at listening.]

It seems so odd that many of us buy into this achievement gap invisible assumption, this stealth of equality. Something about data and statistics and math that makes us all shut down and follow.

Over the last four years, our district has given us space to listen, without an agenda. The expert in the room is much like that school-math laden piece of data, that chart, that graph. It can make us mindless. It prods us on.

But to what? For what?

Who's to say what achievement is? We certainly have enough evidence that standardization has a crippling effect. The latest economic data can be depressing. But it's most likely deeper than that. No? Who's to say getting a job, getting money, etc, is what will bring quality of life.
They have said our county is 6th in the nation for suicide. One every nine days they say. I’m thinking if people who have taken their lives had mastered (and according to the way we decide our data most did) how to rationalize a denominator, et al, it wouldn't make a difference to their quality of life. So why that gap? Why that game?

Respecting people, absolutely.
Respecting the hold pisa, sat, achievement gap assumptions, success assumptions, etc, have on us, absolutely not.
Let's respectfully call all of it into question. Or better yet.. let's walk on. Let's not get distracted from being alive by our obsession with counting and recounting and rehashing our assumed quantities of... what gap again?

Imagine .. a flipped classroom of a different color. A different flavor. The flipping is ongoing and it's more about connections. It's more about a mindset. It's more about trust than our current obsession with mistrust. Trust in people. Trust in learning. With learner as owner.
Imagine, as a home base, if you like, only spending 30/60 min a day/week with a group of 8-15. Imagine if that gathering is the only standard of public ed, the only accountability piece..

we kindly request that you are known by someone.

Interdependency. You can choose.
[We currently have approx 15,350 students and 1083 certified staff, that comes to about 15 kids to one staff, 2087 if you include classified, that's about 8 kids to one staff.]

Imagine .. the rest of the time, which could then be 7 full days/nights minus 60 min, we can all choose to do things like this and this and this and this.
Like this.
We would have time to crowdsource local communities of practice. Live face to face communities of practice, enhanced, jumpstarted, intertwined with virtual communities of practice.
[There are so many ways to learn today.. I stopped actively filling this grid in a while back.. there really is no end.]

So imagine some of that.
Imagine unleashing people via mentor(s) per choice. With time, space, resources.
All per choice.

And imagine some of this.
[I've seen too much over the last four years, and I know too much of useful ignorance, to not boldly add this...]
Perhaps those most assumed dysfunctional in our current system, (school/society/mindset), will be finding quality of life, will be blowing us away, sooner than the rest, because perhaps, one of our biggest detriments is our current satisfaction with an assumed quality of life, with an assumed standard of measure. Perhaps what is missing most is a dissatisfaction. A real one. One that gets to our gut. One that makes us move. One that helps us see the invisible, hear the silence, seek to preserve the wilderness. One that makes us play/wander/wonder/become more than it makes us complain/whine/defend/conform.
Perhaps all we really need is space, time, equitable access to resources, and someone to listen to us, facilitate us, believe in us, without an agenda, without reference to some assumed achievement, to some assumed gap. Those we currently refer to when we talk of the low end of the achievement gap, often share something in common, they don't have what those on the high end have when they go home, if they have a home. There is no assumed expert when they're away from school. well, what if the absence of the assumed expert, the absence of assumption, is all that is needed. To get us to dance. To get us to dance to the music of our soul, that which we can't ignore. To get us to share the thing inside each one of us, that is waiting to be brilliant.

What if the gap is flipped, for a short time, because we decide there is no gap. We decide it was/is myth. What if we start believing that we are all a thumbprint, and life starts today. There is no more waiting.
Our thumbs are fine. we just need to listen to them. Be/become them. Be/become us. Per choice.

And what if in this new space, this space of permission to be, this infinite game, where we are following our bliss, our most earnest and intense curiosities, what if in spaces such as this, that assumed gap becomes invisible.

pi lab happening

2012-01-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

let's do stuff.
let's jump in.
let's find out what our city is most interested in.

You can start by going to any (or all) of three spaces (for now.)
At each space, you can fill in what you'd like to teach/learn/suggest as a class/gathering.
Add your name/contact to anything already there you'd like to be a part of.:

Walk/bike/drive to 206 East 4th. Suite 10, is the hallway in the basement (under Tenfold), there's a sign that says "pi lab." Find a poster size paper with a grid.
Click on this google doc.
*Register/join hourschool.com

We'll try to aggregate these all together, because we realize some will prefer a live sign up. Some will prefer online.

*One benefit to #3, will be a future documentation of what you've taught/learned, along with links to people you did it with. Here is a beta example of how that might look. See Alex's page.

Please leave comments below (or to Alex and Ruby at hourschool) if you have any suggestions or trouble.

notice.

dream.

connect.

do.

have fun.

[If you're a student and would like to do this as a part of the TSDInnovationLab 2nd semester, have your folks fill out this form, give it to your counselor, and request independent study w/monika hardy. If you're a teacher, you can get tic credit via ind. study as well. If you're a uni student, we are working on credit there. Email me at monk51295@gmail.com or message me on facebook if you would like to know more.]

________________

gathering per choice

2011-12-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

This article is very fitting with our vision, with communities of practice.
It's written by Meg Wheatley, who wrote the book, Walk Out Walk On, that I am currently reading.

I took notes as I read the article on you blog, but thought I would add them here as well.. so that people could use the listen option.
I'm hoping it might wet your whistle to read the article.

all life organizes into networks... not boxes or hierarchies
wherever you look in the natural world ..you find networks not organizational charts...and they are always incredibly messy, dense, tangled, and extraordinarily effective at creating greater sustainability for all who participate in them
nothing living lives alone. life always and only organizes as systems of interdependency
last 300 years we've focuses on an unreal machine model..
dense webs of connection have been replaced with predesigned organizational charts that neatly detail who should be connected to who
and we quickly forget that life knows how to organize itself.. that organization is a naturally occurring phenomenon
we come to believe that if we don't do the organizing.. nothing will get done
the realization that individuals need each other is at the heart of every system.
seemingly divergent self interests develop into a system of interdependency
many years ago Joel barker popularized the idea of paradigms and world views...
if something is impossible to achieve with one paradigm or worldview, it can be surprisingly easy to accomplish with a new worldview
the change: machines... to living beings...; manage org charts... to messy living networks...rhizomes
a living system forms itself as it recognizes share interests. (pi lab thinking)
for changes to occur..there must be a change in meaning
people...like all life, only change when they allow an event or info to disturb them into voluntarily letting go of their present beliefs and developing new interpretation. nothing living changes until it interprets things differently. change occurs when we let go of our certainty
time to wake up (and she wrote this in 1999) ...that we belong in relationships that require us to pay attention to the dynamics of systems, not isolated individuals, buildings, or events.
systems are never a result of geography..systems arise because people choose to affiliate
most schools districts are not systems... they networked artificially by lines and what some one determines
they're not systems because they don't arise from a core standard of beliefs
w/o core beliefs... without the why.. people just coinhabit, they coexist.. by defining lines... and politicking for power, and they don't have motivation ...
it's the real systems we must work with (she refers to charters.. I would question if these are sharing core beliefs enough for motivation and brilliance and quality of life, it's more the parents beliefs... kids not per choice)
system is defined by shared meaning... not size ..so could be 2 or more
noticing... has to be a choice
after ,bouncing around.. changing original form.. causing great chaos.. and confusion..which feels awful... now ready to change
because it falls apart, the system sees it has capabilities of reorganizing itself
it is impossible to change others
the freedom to self-determine is intrinsic to all life.
it's impossible to impose anything on life.
nobody can figure out what's best for someone else
we only support what we create
to make a system healthier...we simply need to connect it more to itself
if we have a convo first ( hear each others stories) we discover one another as colleagues
t shirt:you cant a hate someone who's story you know
Myron says... start anywhere... follow it everywhere
has to be meaningful to system.. and they have to be the ones talking and doing about it
we can't design anything that works if we don't have the whole system involved in it's creation
that way we harvest invisible intelligence
we keep hoping we don't need to involve everyone.. if we have a good plan.. people will accept it because of it's merits... but no
people only support what they create
greatest challenge...learning to live in this process world. participate as things unfold, expect surprise, and to not know...
give up role of master creator and move into the dance of life.. there is no alternative.. life insists we put ourselves in motion
not so much about balance.. but of self-awareness... knowing when you are off balance

for notes like this on Walk Out Walk On - go here.

communities of practice

2011-12-09T18:37:00.000-08:00

via the lovely @onepercentyellow

Imagine if all we focused on in public ed was facilitating people toward their people.
[seeing ed as a conduit to communities of practice. getting kids (teachers/parents/people) into those spaces they are dreaming about. then learning is contextual. what would they do, where would they be if nothing was compulsory.. let’s get them there doing that..] a great example is tradeschool and a great example and partner is hourschool.

This job of creating serendipity seems perhaps daunting. But what if all it takes is us slowing down and listening without an agenda.

Imagine public ed being a conduit to communities of practice.
Imagine experimenting, wherever you are, and take it wherever (Walk Out Walk On), with one or 10 or 500 people, in a city, a school, a class, a village. Supply a google spreadsheet, or the device they have in their pocket, or a clipboard, a sidewalk, a wall, mud, ..(space-based), where people can add their name, their interest, their talent, their contact info. Imagine not managing that. Imagine facilitating that. Per choice.

We are experimenting in a town of about 70,000. We are garnering a space with enough wall to host this chart. We are inviting people to participate, in the yoga class, the russian session, the guitar lesson, robotics, qr-coding the museum, building a teen shelter, etc. We’re experimenting with the only ticket to get involved includes: your name, your contact info, your talent/time/interest.
We're experimenting with a gift culture.

...the antidote to our ubiquitous transactional culture that has turned the accumulation of material resources into a near-sacred pursuit the world over.. - Manish Jain

We’re experimenting with crowdsourcing our community to see which communities of practice are currently in need of larger spaces to gather. Then we'll seek out spaces to gather, via more crowdsourcin. We'll seek to use spaces we already have.
[our latest idea: eventually the dream is to sell pies in the store front. dry erase walls… for esp parents/adults in community to have a place to come and converse.. share ideas/fears/dreams.
starting out now – (will be future back end of space) – kids crowdsourcing our town for communities of practice.. ie: what interests do you have.. match people up.. see which ones need bigger spaces, etc to gather. doing all this under the guise of talent/time coop, where the focus is giving.]

Let your mind go wild (wilderness areas are vital for the human spirit and creativity). You can do/learn/be whatever you want. Imagine no one needing to be an expert. Then a group gathers with no official expert, and they work together to figure it out, they skype in an expert, the google, they search youtube, the read wikipedia,.. We'll seek to use people, resources we have.

What we're thinking about.
Connections are our gold. Communities of practice are our luxury, they are what our souls crave. We crave being with our people.
So - what if pi means more than we ever imagined. What if the 6 degrees of separation, last calculated as 4.47 degrees of separation, is actually going to converge on 3.14152 degrees of separation. What if connecting really is that simple. What if it's not even degrees of separation of people, but degrees of separation to your community of practice? What if this is the kind of mathematical thinking people can fall in love with?
Look at the circle. The circle of life. Your circle of friends. The diameter represents the distance between the most unlikely connections. It takes about 3 of those distances, till a meet up occurs.
What if that is why pi is so cool, what if that is why it never ends...

What if we believed that.
What if we believed that connecting to your people can happen.
Almost 100% chance, within a city. Within 3 people away.
Almost 100% chance, virtually. Within 3 minutes away.

Connections are gold.
The web is allowing us to converge to our people on three.

Imagine that simple step, over time, changing a person, a room, a city, .. the world.

Connect.
Let’s just give it a try.

Nothing live lives alone. Life only and always organizes as systems of interdependency.

-Meg Wheatley

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global ed conference

2011-11-19T11:16:00.000-08:00

We just presented this at the Global Ed Conference, if you are so inclined. It's an hour session, but might be helpful if you want to know more about this quiet revolution.
Trailer to the session:

and the slidedeck we used:

be you. (gec11)

View more presentations from monika hardy

lines of flight

2011-11-19T05:52:00.000-08:00

Great capture of spaces, spaces of permission to be, by Mary Ann Reilly (who also wrote the rhizome section of the be you book.)

lines of flight

alternate means to monitor growth

2011-11-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

What our trip to NY helped us to focus on and articulate:

The lab has come about via crowdsourcing youth, specifically about redefining school. Four years ago, we started following Jason Fried's insight that work is where we get the least work done, Rework. We started wondering about ways to redefine the 7 hours a day we call school. We wondered how we could change things up so that people weren't waiting till 3pm or the weekend, or until they graduate, etc.

The resulting plan challenges all we have come to know and practice in ed, particularly the publicly prescribed curriculum. Through the space our district has allowed us to experiment, we have tried, failed, and learned, about creating ways to find and facilitate the genius inside each person. We have been asked to draft a short book. It has five chapters, each an element we believe to be key to this facilitation.

We believe that one of the elements could become an alternative means to monitor growth. It focuses on self-reflection, guided by a process of learning to learn. One of the biggest hesitations we get from parents about this plan to redefine school, is their concern about college admission and employer resume. One of the biggest hesitations from college admissions and employers, is their concern with the current alternative, looking at portfolios, because of its time-consumption.

We believe this video documentation that we are prototyping can address both. We collected 600+ raw footage videos last year and are continuing with more of a self-reflection this year. The technology involved in Deb Roy's TED, Birth of a Word, is what we are after.

We're thinking since this documentation is a comparison to self, rather than to others, or to other countries, and that it could be extrapolated in a 1-2 min video that spans a course of time, it could offer not only a more humane means to monitor growth of a person, but also a more humane means for the college admissions office and the employer resume search, etc.
Imagine a 1 min video, via search, say on film editing, or Naturopathic medicine, or permaculture, that showcases a person's exposure to and reflection on that topic over the last, say, four years. Not enough insight? Research the same person, now on their ability to self-direct their learning, another on the spot, tailored to your inquiry, 1 minute video, pops up, this time showcasing the person over the last four years with their increasing (or stagnent, or decreasing) ability to notice more, to connect to more appropriate people and information, etc.

We have some incredible people working on this documentation, but we believe if we could:
get some assistance/insight from Deb Roy, and/or others at the MIT media lab that were a part of creating the tech automation his TED showcases, we could address our mission in a more timely manner. Our mission - to free up more spaces of permission for people to learn from the curiosity inside, just in time learning, in public ed.

We are also would love to talk with Chuck Hamilton of IBM and/or the makers of the cinemetrics below:

cinemetrics from fb on Vimeo.

Or any of the incredible people at Google or Youtube, working specifically with search engines. Roger Schank, Alan Kay, many incredible minds we would love to tap into.
Or - any student of this, local, virtual.

We're making a call out for help with something we believe could immediately have a huge impact on how we all spend the hours of our day.

_____________

the be you house

2011-10-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

[questions from Jeff Brazil, for posting on dmlcentral.]

why? why did you want to do this?
The be you house was a part of an original four year plan kids crafted two years ago to redefine school. At least this kind of a space was in the plan. We were wanting to move somewhere downtown so that kids could walk or bike to mentors/apprenticeships. The space also fits with our redefinition of No Child Left Behind (NCLB): providing the vast exposure, the mentors alongside, the relationships, that happen naturally in a non-oppressive and nurturing home situation.

Virtually all the learning that precedes schooling - walking, talking, bye-bye and peekaboo, the intricate rhythms of life within a household - is learning as homecoming. It proceeds at dazzling speed compared with school learning, yet it is underestimated nearly everywhere. Infants have visible states of intense alertness from their earliest weeks, and as they mature they continue to be engrossed in learning, as if they were aware of what they needed to know and how to discover it, with an unfolding promise of participation ahead. ...new learning feels like something known forever.

- Mary Catherine Bateson, Peripheral Visions

The why of kids crafting a plan to redefine school in the first place, was a noticing that most people are stressed, waiting for 3pm or the weekend, or when they graduate. Perhaps seeking a homecoming of the soul.
note: We were moving into a downtown 385 sq ft basement room two weeks before school started. The house, 2500 sq ft, built in 1910, was a pleasant, last minute, surprise, as are most things while embracing perpetual beta. We have to offer huge thanks and gratitude to Barry Floyd’s unending kindness and support.

what was the genesis moment? what questions/issues were you and your students asking or wrestling with that you thought this'd answer?
We’ve learned everything by doing, prototyping, and then learning from things that didn’t work. After experiencing our first year of the plan last year, where the Innovation Lab was located in a building at one of the highschools, we were seeking a more central location, where kids could walk to apprenticeships, to the library, to the city building, to the dance studio, etc. We were seeking a more eclectic space. We were seeking one that might offer more private space, as well as more space to gather. Actually, a space that could morph daily, whenever needed. One with vast exposure. One that resembled life. One were you could be. One where you could move out and in of, in order to experience authentic living. I had just read Lisa Gansky’s The Mesh, so we were also seeking a shared space, one that perhaps was dormant, or not being used to its potential.

mechanically speaking, how did it go from aspiration to actuality? did you approach private parties, school board etc?
We talked to anyone and everyone, but most connections were made from people finding out about us and asking for more insight. Marcie, of Loveland’s Creative Sector Development has helped us secure some amazing connections. A connection to Barry, the owner of the house, was one of them, because of his connection to Artspace. Barry has continued to make incredible connections for us.
We weren’t and aren’t selling anything. We weren’t defending anything. That freed us up time, time to do. The doing helped people to like what we were doing, and so then offer to help, to offer us space. To date everything has happened on voluntary donations.
Knowing this was just something that was going to happen helped. We knew we could go non-profit if it didn’t work out with the district. In all that we’re doing, we want to do as much with the district as possible.. so always talking to them first. But it’s been most often in unofficial ways. Most official stances take a while to budge, and we don’t feel we have a while. Usually we’re talking to a person, rather than an organization, board, etc. Personal stories have been the inspiration and energy.

what is your hypothesis on how it'll help advance learning, education, school?
We hope that the be you house will be and/or is a physical manifestation of the web. We hope it models an eclectic nature that is always changing. We hope it’s a space that encourages mindfulness. Feedback has been that upon seeing the house, people are starting to understand this disruptive and obscure plan.
We believe that a change in education will happen once we all realize the need to resign from publicly prescribed learning. We’re hoping the house models that potential and opportunity. And then disappears as the existing school buildings, spaces all over the town, become similar spaces with vast options. They become spaces of resources, of gatherings per choice.
The four year plan is a lot to take in, because it is all encompassing, it’s beyond school. The house has helped people to visualize the five elements of the plan.

affecting the research:

rhizomatic connections:

how will you and your students know if it's successful?
We’re thinking a sign of success will be that in a few years, no one will be talking about the Innovation Lab, because they will have come to realize it as a mindset within themselves. People will have realized that publicly prescribed learning can bind us to an ongoing dependency on it. A sign of success will be that our town, that public education, will resemble the eclectic and rhizomatic model the house is currently beginning to represent.
On our very bold side, we believe on a national and even global level, freedoms we may acquire because of the research we are doing will secure spaces for others to be. We’re not thinking what we’re doing is rare, or special. We believe anyone can do this starting today. Most are not because of the system in place that is keeping us in check, that is keeping us too busy. If we can help dislodge the negative parts of the system, the mindless parts of the system, we have full confidence in people being able to to do any of this, and more.

what is the physical environment like? (pictures, video?)

what have you observed and noticed already, both positive and concerning?
The difficult part is finding the balance between my freedom and our freedom. Making sure that my dreams and daily ongoings don’t interfere with yours. Most of us aren’t used to free spaces. Most of us don’t know what to do when it hasn’t been all planned out. This isn’t concerning, it’s difficult. There is a huge difference there, between concerning and difficult. Personally, the detox booth, the daily reflections where I verbalize outloud what i’m noticing, keeps hitting me in the face with how difficult it is to just be. And how difficult it is to listen without an agenda. But it’s also the most incredible insight I’ve experienced.
What is concerning, in my opinion, would have to be the more aware we are becoming of the addiction most of us have to prescription, be it prescribed curriculum, adult authority, blind allegiance to policy, etc. Concerning is that we are jeopardizing ourselves, but even worse, our children, with that blind allegiance.
The positive, is how humane this all is. How intensely people crave spaces of permission, especially mental spaces. It’s very surreal to see people realize that option for perhaps the first time in their life. It’s mind boggling that we are in the land of the free, and yet many of us haven’t tasted of mental freedom.

Peter in the be you house:

A lot of thinking from last year on the need for spaces of permission to be:

pre-scribed learning

2011-09-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading Peripheral Visions: by Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of Margaret Mead

Here's a clip about half way through the book about chocolate milk.. what a great analogy. It drives home the main narrative of our quiet revolution: realizing our blind addiction to publicly prescribed learning.

There have been a series of experiments in educational television, devoted to packaging reading or geography in the frenetic cadences of quiz shows, cartoons, and commercials.

It is hard to criticize programming that seems to work in conveying something useful, but children who are given chocolate milk to get calcium into them grow up as chocolate eaters, not as milk drinkers. Children prepared for school by children's television arrive better prepared for the content of their lessons but perhaps less tolerant of the rhythms of reflection and multiple return appropriate to gradual growth in understanding, for attention that is exacted tips over easily into boredom, while learning flourishes on the subtleties of recycled attention. Recognizing that education should be enjoyable rather than punitive, we sometimes attempt to alleviate boredom by making bits and pieces of education entertaining, instead of discovering and supporting those modes of activity to which the experience of boredom is simply irrelevant.

How much are we doing this today.. with pbl (project based learning), gaming, technology bling...?
Not that any of those are bad if that's what geeks you out.
But used for even a kind-hearted cohersion... we're spinning our wheels, and missing the essence of change. We're asking the wrong questions. And we're answering questions that no one is really, mindfully, asking.

let's resign from publicly pre-scribed learning.

When a people at war become mirror images of the enemy, the war is already lost.

____________________

mentor alongside

2011-09-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

Adam's reflections of the day.. listen without an agenda.

episode 2 on hangout

2011-09-02T04:04:00.003-07:00

learning about learning

2011-08-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

my last few years.. analogous to what i'm learning about learning..

Previous to the last few years, I have been tinkering with teaching math within the public school system. Alongside, I have been listening to people, kids in particular, but all ages. A common thread, most people often share a sense of stress. They talk about being anxious for the end of the school/work day, or the end of the school/work week, or summer, or graduation, etc.
About 4 years ago, because of my reading so much of Seth Godin, I joined his online Triiibe. It was there that I met up with a small group discussing school. From that group I connected with one person in particular. We spent the next 6 months skyping, practically 24/7. We had so many similar ideas about life, school, stress. It felt like I learned more in that 6 months than I had in the previous years of my life. Whether or not it was more, it was most definitely different. I think I can describe it best as a learning from my soul. It was something I couldn't not do. I was hungry, craving to know more and more. How could we change up the way we spend the hours in our days?
That relationship/learning spurred in me three things in particular, that has been ongoing for the last four years now: a reading frenzy; a revolution of thinking facilitated by twitter; and an intense listening to youth.
Two years ago, kids crafted/designed a four year plan of disruption, while piloting a self-directed math course. [If you're so inclined, see a bird's eye view of that unfolding, and/or more specifics to that first pilot year of self-directed math.]
We just finished year one of the four year plan (2010-2011). The Innovation Lab was a space within a public highschool, where 50 kids from the district (all ages, but mostly highschool, and mostly the highschool where we were located) came for one or more classes to practice/experiment with self-directed learning per passion, rather than curriculum/standards. We dabbled in game design, portugese, permaculture, homelessness, human trafficking, sign language, hebrew, dog training, neuroscience, pedagogy, ..
During the last two years, doing the math pilot and the Innovation Lab, because of the permission/space the district allowed me to really listen, what I heard most, was kids, retelling me all that I had learned from my Belgium mentor, and from all the reading I had done. I would spend days in conversation, recording these youth voices, blown away as often they would sum up Clay Shirky, John Hagel, Kevin Kelly, Jason Fried, Lisa Gansky, Seth Godin, Carol Dweck, Roger Martin, Jane McGonigal, Sugata Mitra, Steven Johnson, ... more.
While listening to all of this, and having huge reaffirmation to the books I had read, I continued reading. Now a new perspective, as I continued to read, suggested by people who knew me and what we had been doing, I felt as though I had written them. They weren't just sounding like my story, like a cool resonation, it felt surreal. Yaacov Hecht writing about a student in his Education Cities in Israel who appeared to only play soccer for three years, Colin Ward writing about how we can learn richly from the city and how we often strip/limit creativity/allure when we design playgrounds, Blaine McCormick writing about Thomas Edison's labs, which describe our vision of the be you house, and Ivan Illich nailing our why for detox.

Year two has us moving downtown (2011-2012). We just secured (like 2 weeks ago) a most lovely space for at least a year, this be you house. This, a gift from an extremely kind-hearted man we have only recently met. Not only is his generosity facilitating this quiet revolution, his connections to people in our community is widening our local world, and feeding right into this plan. Two key elements of the plan are 1) interdependency, where each youth is connected to someone in the community per passion rather than kindness, and 2) city as floorplan, where kids are moving around in the community to apprenticeships, lecture halls, chem labs, coffee house meet ups, as they learn from living, in a city.

I'm noticing/experiencing a different relationship with learning/living. It's something I'm much more a part of than I ever have been. I've always done well in school, which made me think I loved learning, and maybe I did. The big difference for me, is that I'm no longer doing, in order to finish. That is huge. I'm no longer doing in order to finish. I'm learning to do, in order to do. I'm learning to do in order to be.
Learning is growing as a result of a relationship with a person(s) per passion. A rhizomatic relationship, where learning was in the flow of give and take. It's coming from a personal mentor that would strew new insight/options/questions, who modeled how to learn/fail right alongside me, who modeled continuous feedback looping, so that I learned to crave critique/obstacles. What's next was driven by my own curiosities, and the serendipity I helped to create.

So what this has taught me about learning in particular, is that

1) If we want brilliance of an individual, learning begs to be non-compulsory. Dewey writes that true intellectual learning comes from the curiosity inside each learner. Papert suggests we find the curriculum inside each learner. If learning comes from within, if there's a freedom/permission of mental/physical spaces to be, it will be life-long, it will develop a hunger for more. This creates indispensable people.
[ie: If we do project-based learning, yet define a set from which the projects can come, we are in a sense giving only partial freedom. Ivan Illich writes, freedom is reduced to a selection among packaged commodities. Krishnamurti writes, partial freedom is no freedom.]
2) These spaces happen. They happen in life, they happen with people. The hard part, or maybe it's easy, it just happens to appear to be the piece we are missing, is protecting these spaces from our fixed mindset, our own mindlessness, in doing what/how we've always done.

From my latest read, Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society:

A common complaint about schools, one that is reflected for example, in the recent (book was published in 1972) report of the Carnegie Commission: In school, registered students submit to certified teachers in order to obtain certificates of their own; both are frustrated and both blame insufficient resources - money, time, or building - for their mutual frustration.

I believe that the contemporary crisis of education demands that we review the very idea of publicly prescribed learning rather than the methods used in its enforcement.

That's huge, take it in...

I believe that the contemporary crisis of education demands that we review the very idea of publicly prescribed learning rather than the methods used in its enforcement.

I'm thinking, a quiet revolution, if successful, guards against falling into the money/resource trap, but rather seeks resources in unlikely places. We see a budget crunch as an opportunity to do things a different way. [Lisa Gansky's the Mesh and Carol Dweck's Mindset in particular.]
A quiet revolution may appear ridiculous to most, that's why it's quiet/disruptive, by design. People questioning the validity, the reality, of such a plan, need not fret/follow/support. A quiet revolution isn't a sell. It exists, simply as a resource, fall in love with it if you will. But it's your choice. It will only happen for you, if it's your choice. And the world needs it to happen for you.

Just as learning/living seems best, seems to be most useful, if it is garnered per choice.

be you.
[a quiet revolution]

add on sept 28:
last year Lucas spent a couple intense weeks writing on a dry erase board in our office. then he called up James Bach on skype to share his speculations. it ended up he had been dabbling with and finding the theory of relativity. can't explain to you the energy that ignites.
that's how i feel about my learning. i didn't read dewey and illich first (well - i'm guessing i might have but have no recollection of it). that might have led us in another direction, missed some adjacent possibilities, most definitely would have kept me from the intensity with which i believe in all that i am doing. to have found something by following a curiosity you can't ignore, then to find others, 50, 100 years earlier were saying the same thing.. only now you have the means to push it through or beyond.
this is very dmi-ish. yeah. it really is.

hangout

2011-08-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

This is what a hangout on google + looks like.
And this is a group I have been hanging out with - a working group.. putting some things in motion.. wishing mostly to eradicate standardization, seat time, carnegie unit.. within and without the system. Building spaces to be, not just for us, or for the few (in comparison) that are innovating.. but for anyone anywhere that is so inclined.

Huge thank you to @PaulAllison for having us on his edtechtalk ttt..

great reads

2011-08-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

I tried to acquire three books I highly recommend for lab peoples. I'm thinking however, it may be best if each of you just order them online via amazon's.. used books. they cost a dollar or two and 3.99 shipping.

At Work with Thomas Edison that really describes the culture we are seeking with the be you house.

and

Deschooling Society which describes very succinctly how important it is that we respectfully question what we are currently doing with the hours in our day. What we are currently asking our youth to do with the hours in their day. free online
free audio

Tools for Conviviality help explain our addiction to dependency on publicly prescribed learning. Which, Illich says, is the realization that could turn ed change on a dime.

perhaps after reading them you could donate them to our be you house library..

thanks guys..

be you book

2011-08-21T17:03:00.000-07:00

hey guys...

Barry has afforded us an incredible space.
The district is supporting our efforts as we experiment in these spaces - of permission to be.

we can't not share this.

That's the focus of detox. A means to self-directed, life-long learning, for anyone. Our goal is to continually create more spaces of permission - especially mental spaces. We want others in our district and in other districts to benefit as well.

So - per student suggestion - this year we're trying to package detox and the be you concept in more user friendly forms.
This book is one of them. Here it is in very rough draft form.. which is perfect if you have any suggestions.
Please leave a note in the comments here...and/or find this posting on facebook, in our group: tsd innovation lab, and comment there.. and/or comment directly on the doc.

thank you..

_____________________

the why

2011-08-12T04:51:00.000-07:00

Simon Sinek’s ted about the importance of why, actually had me curious at first. Why why first? How seemed awfully huge. As did what.
But it kept proving itself true.

We, the world, have been quite obsessed with the how school is done. Years of study of pedagogy. our own research starting 3 years ago, asking, how would you redefine school, was focused at first on the answer to our own presupposed question, how.
What we’ve come to find from that, a smaller version of the rest of the world, is that everyone learns differently. Nothing is for everyone in the how.
Not very many push back on that these days. In fact most of our moneys and energies and resources go toward differentiation. How to get those core standards into each child.

What if we’re focusing on a how to a wrong what, because we haven’t taken the energy, strength, time, to ask a more critical question, why.

We presuppose a what. Yet if we would but question the what, the game completely changes. for whatever reasons: the increase of web use/access in the last 5-10 years; we’re smarter; we’ve found we know so little; we’re getting back to holistic basics; back to our culture(s);.... the relativity of the what is now in question. Well it always has been, but now in public ed (whatever that means) we can facilitate that.

The way to facilitate what we do under the guise of school, is to personalize to the why. The why determines the what. Which determines the how.
Only none of it is standard. There is no normal.

320 east 3rd

2011-08-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

as our space is getting more and more move-in able.. thought i'd share some things that we're thinking we could use.
don't want this to sound like a begging list, people have asked how they can help.
trying to give a wide range of things as well.
if something strikes your fancy - that you'd like to share - or know of a connection that could, we would greatly appreciate it. the list is in no particular order. imagine that.

warm regards..

things to do:

reading kids blogs in order to get to know them better - left side of this site.. most recent float to top, Satori's is staying at the bottom xiogirl
help create some serendipity.. talk to people with the idea of making connections for kids
~~stairs sanded and refinished~~ (thank you Way and Gean)
~~windows/blinds cleaned~~ (thank you Linda, Gage, and Colton)
someone overseeing google doc - database of talents/interests
someone overseeing email connections
someone overseeing tech/books/inventory - scan system
~~clean patio room up for food pantry~~ (thank you Linda, et al)
find/create tool/supply/cleaning supply room
~~recording studio/room~~ (Gus and Gage working on it)
~~piano painted~~ (Karina working on it)
~~detox room floor - sanded/stained or painted~~ ~~(thank you Cristian)~~
stairs painting the going down down stairs - keyboard
build green house in back yard
create/find bike repair shop
dark room in basement
video room - w/green wall, etc

new things:

more dry erase paint (couple walls at be you house, one at pi lab, 406 e 4th, suite 10)
money toward monthly utilities - ?
money toward monthly wifi - i think $40 first 6 months, then $50
~~window blinds... one to match in middle.. rest to match or not~~ (thank you Barry)
ear buds
~~whiteboard paint for a couple walls~~ (one in kitchen - for calendar, one in brainstorm room) (thank you Rayments)
kleenex/tp
bean bags
15x15 b&w snapshots of people in the lab - $10.50 per each if you'd like to sponsor one
chargers for macbooks
imac and final cut

recycled (and/or new) things:

laptops
iphones - could really use some of these.. if you've upgraded and have one lying around
bikes
bike pumps
(lime) green spray paint
~~upright piano cover or tarp~~ (thank you Linda)
sod - leftover from jobs.. know of anyone with this?
gardening tools
~~video camera (for our detox booth) -~~ (macbook for this... thank you)
~~go pro video camera~~ - $200ish - (donation for this - thank you)
potter's wheel
recording studio supplies
instruments (thanks for the piano, organ, guitar, ...)
short school bus
materials to build a greenhouse

i'll keep updating - and add a video of the place soon.
[if you'd like to see ongoing videos of the be you house and happenings there.. follow them on our youtube channel here. if that doesn't work - it's just 51295monk on youtube.]

dmlcentral

2011-08-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

Our 2nd post on DMLcentral just went up yesterday.

2nd movie at the feed and grain will be Thursday, 8pm.

Holler if you want to take a look at our new space.

________________

rscon3

2011-07-21T21:04:00.000-07:00

In a few days, nearly 8000 educators from over 40 different countries are expected to attend a free 3 day virtual conference, The Reform Symposium, #RSCON3. This free award-nominated e-conference is going to take place on July 29-31st, 2011. Participants can attend this online conference from the comfort of their homes or anywhere that has Internet access. This amazing conference provides educators new or currently active on social networks the opportunity to connect with educators and professionals in the field of education worldwide. With over 12 Keynotes, 80 presenters, and 3 keynote panel discussions you are bound to be inspired!

View the schedule to plan which presentations you will attend!
Download the flyer to share with your school!
Watch this Youtube video of January 2011's conference!
See if your school will count this as continuing education credit!
Consider hosting a viewing party!

We would like to thank the incredible organizers- Shelly Terrell, Kelly Tenkely, Chris Rogers, Lisa Dabbs, Melissa Tran, Clive Elsmore, Mark Barnes, Ian Chia, Cecilia Lemos, Jerry Blumengarten, and Kyle Pace- and Steve Hargadon of Classroom 2.0 and The Future of Education online communities for making this incredible conference possible.

We hope you can join us for this incredible professional development experience!

what i'll be sharing on behalf of the lab:

it’s ok that this video sucks right now.

if it would have been perfect, this guy, and this guy, and this gal, and this gal, might not have felt the pull/allure to join us, to help us create/do better.

the why brings people together in ways that will matter most.

work on your why.

find a topic/speaker/person at rscon11 that will strengthen your why.

and don’t wait for perfect, just do. do what you can’t not do.

waiting is, well, waiting.

and perfect never comes.

imperfection creates spaces/invitations for unlikely people to become indispensable.

what’s next?...

it’s happening.

perpetual beta.

would love to have you join in.. for us, it will be the 30th from 3:30 to 4pm.

will share the main points to these videos, hoping to leave most all of the time for q&a.
and you talking if you come.. come early to check out your mike if you'd like to talk.
link to our room: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/launch/meeting.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.91883AFE86D6F71CAF60449D57EEEE
will become live up to an hour before..

Helpful prezi by Shamblesguru for all RSCON navigation with video tutorials, http://bit.ly/rscon3prezi.

_______________________

detox

2011-07-17T06:17:00.000-07:00

as posted by Adam on hastac

awakening indispensable people

2011-07-09T06:33:00.001-07:00

ugh. wish i was better at videos..
but at least a lot of what we're doing, a lot of info, is here now

perhaps one of the darlings will remix it all.. so it's easy on the eyes and ears.
:)

perpetual beta momentarily defined

2011-07-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

We got a room. Our first space downtown.

Although I think we knew it in our hearts, recent events here have nudged us into thinking, definition of space is much like definition of culture. Or perhaps rather, it's very key to keeping culture.

While it's harder to maybe do, harder for most of us to trust, because it is so different, we're now thinking that designated homebase space could play out better if it's small/modest. At least if we're going for city as floorplan.

Comfort, like definitive objectives, curriculum, etc, often keep us from being mindful. Often keep us from immersion into life - into our communities.

A challenge is taking that jump from there is no one space, to finding/using best suited spaces that already exist. Spaces that already host expert mentors, personally for each learner.

We say it often, but living it, being vulnerable in context - making school life, or doing life and calling that school - that's the challenge. That's the opportunity.

At the end of the day what I'm suggesting is that vulnerability in context can be the most powerful behavior in initiating change.

-Thomas J deLong in Flying Without A Net

So we’ve been given the opportunity of redefining this tiny space (358 sq ft). Of redefining spaces we could call school. Thinking it could serve as a reception/meeting area. Perhaps one wall for videos, all furniture moveable, so could double as dance floor, etc.

There’s the potential of:

an adjacent space [434 sq ft].. perhaps as a resource homebase.. housing laptops, books, bikes, cameras, potential recording room..
another tiny space down the hall [54 sq ft] as our detox booth (can’t wait to share more about this]
and possibly another bigger space in the future [849 sq ft] (Everett liked this one), that would need to be fixed up first

It’s funny/fitting - looking at some things I wrote a week earlier about city as floorplan/school:

meet people in your city
spend time with homeless people
take more walks
make more connections with locals
imagine unlikely spaces, esp when you feel you can’t do something because of too little resources.

This perfectly small space right smack in the middle of downtown will encourage all of these, no? It will encourage us to do as we’ve said, view the city as floorplan.

More random raw thinking...

Artlab spaces?
Mandolin space?
warehouse building?
local recording studios?
local dance studios?
Egg and I kitchen space?
the library...
etc....

For younger kids, ages 3-8, the Patchwork School - for starters, as a once/week twice/week gathering space.

So, for kids in the Lab - well - it will play out like a perpetual field trip. Each kid will find/have some given space in town.. depending on what they need.

Now for the marquee.
The space isn’t the Lab.. the Lab is in the people really, in all different spaces. So what do we call this perpetual beta momentarily defined in a physical space?
My current thinking.. tsd innovationlab commons,
referring to this definition of commons:
land or resources belonging to or affecting the whole of a community.

What do you think?

Thank you for all of your time, interest and kindness Barry Floyd. You are becoming a key factor in this - awakening of indispensable people.

definitely normal?

2011-06-28T02:56:00.000-07:00

the skinny

View more presentations from monika hardy

Cross posted on the Coop.

_______________

dmlcentral

2011-06-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

our first post

It was suggested our next post be on how other schools/districts could start something like this in the fall.
Would love your insight..
We can connect face to face, on facebook, on email.... created a doc here.

mathland

2011-06-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

Bravo - and spot on to Seymour and Alan..

In my ignorance, flavored with kids' insight and experiences... and my love for mathematics.. i think aloud - boldly...

Is not mathland life?
We live in mathland.
Is that not why we deem PISA so heavily.. our instincts tell us how mathematics is a universal language?
(as i believe all languages are becoming moreso - kids craving more foreign language acquisition as they are becoming more global whether they travel physically or not, ie: frenchland is dispersing as well)

- and yet

Our busy-ness and drive to compete and improve and measure, keeps us from the essence of that universality. We are indeed measuring success per math not per mathematics, not per mathematical thinking. This is such a huge difference. Success is defined, and hence, progress is achieved or more often not achieved, on completely different levels, with completely different values, with completely different results.
In my perception, that is why change (in ownership of learning) hasn't happened since Dewey and Emerson and all the other greats have written about self-directed, learner-owned learning. We are mentally, emotionally, financially, physically... blinded to that difference. It's as if it's so huge and so small all at once. Because the words we choose to talk about a PISA-type success resonate with that instinct toward mathematically thinking, (and yet are indeed rather - math), we succumb to the allure.

And because, so it seems, that will never get us to self-directed ownership, we continue in this perpetual frinzy of searching for the golden key.. the bullet answer.

It seems the answer is.. the answers are everywhere, in everyone. It seems, there is no one answer. Nothing is for everyone. And it seems, most answers are not really answers, most tend to swim in inaccuracy.

If we're wanting to sustain in life, to thrive in life, the answers, or more accurately, the questions, have got to be found in a person(s).
Papert again - find the curriculum in each child.

So yeah - creating a mathland is certainly helpful.. but i'm wondering.. what if we used less of our resources to create a mathland, and freed up more of our valuable resources, the minds of youth, everywhere, to notice more of the mathland that is life. [youth = you to whatever degree you decide]

Trusting that learning and mathematical thinking and French are so huge that they will show up, seems to be the first step in the change we seek.
Trusting that if anything is needed, if anything is worthwhile, it will show up.
Trust that.
Notice that.
Let's take a deep breath and start providing more free spaces, encouraging people to notice more.

We're thinking we will be blown away by the results.. by the unlikely.

if ...

We can endure the very likely bouts of perceived waste/laziness/chaos as we detoxify old patterns of thinking/doing/being.

Currently reading:

Richard Feynman's The Meaning of It All, per @RitaJKing 's high recommend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance, per The Domino Project's recommend.

This is cross posted on the Coop - some of you might like the convos going on there.

__________________

sweet spot

2011-06-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

kool beans...
A friend I met face to face for the first time last week, Isaac Graves, is a part of the Patchwork School in Louisville, a prototype for our city as floorplan.
After we talked a while, Isaac asked if I knew of Yaacov's work with Education Cities. Basically - he's doing our city as floorplan in Israel. Well, actually, something much bigger. And since 1987, dang.
And they are expanding to Puerto Rico, with a kick off conference next March.

So Isaac sent me Yaacov's book. It's amazing. It's like he's writing about our experiences these last two years. Odd feeling. Brilliantly humane feeling.

From a global perspective.. this is where we're headed.. this city as floor plan, these education cities. Whether or not we jump into it now.. it's coming.
Which is a good thing. It's not a nasty threat. The focus is people, human dignity, human spirit. It's what we all crave deep in our soul.

so, ..if it's so good, why is it taking so long?
We're looking for bullet answers. We're looking for immediate answers. We're looking for common/standard answers. We're grasping at straws, throwing money and resources to the wind. Compromising just to move a little.
It's not about perfecting the teacher's aim, as they fill each child with knowledge - Sam Chaltain
It's not about project based learning within a space of determined projects/standards. Or about basics within a space of determined needs. Or about a given amount of time.
In fact today - it's about anything and everything. The answers are everywhere. Because no one thing is for everyone. We can now facilitate that. We can now facilitate personalization in public ed. The web allows us to make the biggest classroom small, the biggest city small, the globe small. It allows us to access everything imaginable in order to zoom in on and find the unique aspect of each individual, the genius residing in each soul.

so, ..sounds chaotic - how could this be a solution for public ed? what can come from chaos?
Turns out everything. Especially that which you want most.
Turns out.. what can come from chaos - is you.
While knowledge is increasing by bounds (doubling every 3 days?), we realize we can no longer keep up. We embrace not knowing. Instead of embracing facts we might know, or are compelled to know, we embrace the process of learning. In fact, the process of learning anything. Which completely changes the game. Now the learner can truly be the central driving force of choice.
Mastery in anything is a really good predictor in anything you want done. - Randy Nelson

so, ..mastery? every person is capable of mastery? what about the bell curve?
Mihaly - flow is from areas of growth, areas of growth come from areas of interest.
Coyle, - myelin sheath grows from deliberate, deep practice, which comes per choice.
True that we don't believe everyone can achieve mastery, but that's because we have been going many years strong in a compulsory ed (late 1800's many). Mastery doesn't come by compulsion. However, one thing school has succeeded very well at is in convincing us what success looks like: good grades, college, job, money.
So it's hard to believe things like, we can all achieve mastery, and that there is a genius inside each one of us.
Look at the bell curve. It's created within this widely accepted belief from school where we're all compared within a specific box of content (Hecht). Supposedly, within that box of content the bell curve holds true. Some people get it, some don't and most fall in the middle. The problem with that, is that the box is not big enough to hold all of our interests. And because of that, very few are learning at their peak. But because we believe in the bell curve, we believe that success lies in the box. We craft ways to work the system, to play the game of school. Kids recently told me their take on the bell curve, without referencing it. According to them, most don't fall in the middle, most fail in the middle. To many are just getting by in order to get on with life.

hecht - bell curve, kids 75% only perception, actually can get 100%

so, ..what's holding us back?
That piece of success school has achieved. That thinking in your brain, from you, your parents, your teachers, .. that success only comes via a certain way.. and college is a huge piece of that. We need most of all, to break out of that mindset.
Today, it's about too many kids making career based decisions on too little info. - Anya Kamenetz

A major function of college is to signal to potential employers that one is qualified to work. The Internet is replacing this signaling function. Employers are recruiting on LinkedIn, Facebook, StackOverflow and Behance. People are hiring on Twitter, selling their skills on Google, and creating personal portfolios to showcase their talent. Because we can document our accomplishments, and have them socially validated with tools such as LinkedIn Recommendations, we can turn experiences into opportunity. As more and more people graduate from college, employers are unable to discriminate among job seekers based on a college degree and can instead hire employees based on their talents.

-Dale Stephens, CNN post

This is huge.. this is great news.

so, ..what's getting in your way?
Without gratitude.. nothing is enough.
Look what you have. - via the brilliance of Nic Askew

sweet spot.
find yours.

________________

spaces of permission

2011-06-02T09:49:00.000-07:00

Kids have connections down. Many of us just don’t see it as legit. Many of them don’t see it as legit. Connections are legit. How kids connect and collaborate is huge to social change.

Adults still hold the keys to dreaming. Whether it’s a pause, a look, a refocus,.. we communicate an assumed agenda.

Perhaps, what we need to do is give kids more space, legit space, to do their thing. Their thing is pretty amazing, if it’s their thing. We can’t give them space, tell them we want them to do their thing, and then tell them how that should look. We won’t be blown away by their brilliance if we continue to manage it.

If we would all give ourselves permission to notice more, we wouldn’t be able to not do more. We’re doing less because we’re hung up on what’s an allowable dream.

We need to focus on finding/creating/supporting free spaces for our YOUth. This could be a joint venture, like no other. This is a huge multi-player game. Too important to not take all of us.

*YOUth – you to whatever degree you decide.

on thinking: city as floorplan

Kids are connecting.

Maybe if we gave them more legit spaces to connect.. started believing, and helping them believe, that what they do matters... and can make a difference.... well .. maybe that would be enough.

Maybe creating/finding more spaces of permission for them to be is our first focus. It seems it would provide a glue of sorts, a foundation.. as they connect more.. and as they did things that mattered more. Something that would feed an exponentially growing drive.

Had already written this post, and now in just finishing Mark Pesce's great read The Playful World, seems fitting to add his words here:

Their language and customs may be strange to us - but not because they are bad or immoral; they simply reflect a deeper understanding of the world we have created for them.
For we have given birth to our teachers.

Our children will know how to make sense of the playful world, and important lesson they will be happy to share with us, if we are willing.

We could allow tech to send us to the sidelines; if we let that happen, our generation will bear the responsibility for all of the horrors of a world massively transformed by pervasive reactive intelligence, widespread nanotechnology, and ubiquitous presence, because we chose to be rigid when we needed to be open-minded. If we decide instead to listen to the young and learn their lessons, we may find that our children, who have grown up surrounded by the magical toys we have given them, are making for themselves a world of play.

And his visions here - of redefining space.

_______________

exemplars

2011-05-23T09:47:00.000-07:00

There are so many exemplars of innovation, no doubt. They are everywhere, doing incredible, incredible things. I can't even list them.. without leaving out incredible ones.. many that I'm not even aware of.

People are amazing if given space to be.

Many are doing remarkable things.

Let’s save some money/time/stress/spirit /etc and just call that school.

My current visuals of exemplars that will be vehicles to a paradigm shift for social change, rather than just doing things really well,... or much better:

1) a physical visual of the shift:
Joi Ito hired by MIT Media Lab

Could we make this a place that would accept me, and more importantly, be able to keep people like me?

On the West Coast, you’ve got Peter Thiel, paying people to drop out of college. And I thought: let’s flip this around. Aren’t there a bunch of those people who dropped out who should be here at the Media Media Lab and how can we figure that out?

MIT hiring Joi forges a new mindset.

A mindset valuing the human spirit over any policy/standard/etc we have previously adhered to. In education even. Doing what has been considered standard doesn’t equate with success anymore.

We need to be freeing kids up to be themselves. Giving them space to fail. Showing them we trust learning. That it is that fascinating and alluring.

2) a mental visual of the shift:
Maria Bustillos' -Wikipedia - the death of an expert

The truth of a discipline, idea or episode in history lies in these interstices," he said. "If you want to understand something complicated it's helpful to look at the back and forth of competing voices or views."

on lab purpose:

There's an enormous difference between understanding something and deciding something. Only in the latter case must options be weighed, and one chosen. Wikipedia is like a laboratory for this new way of public reasoning for the purpose of understanding, an extended polylogue embracing every reader in an ever-larger, never-ending dialectic. Rather than being handed an "authoritative" decision, you're given the means for rolling your own.

But there continues to be resistance to the idea that expertise itself has been called into question, and we can expect that resistance to continue. Experts, understandably, are apt to be annoyed by their devaluation, and are liable to make their displeasure felt. And the thing about experts is that a lot of people still feel disinclined to question them.

So long as we believe that there is such a thing as an expert rather than a fellow-investigator, then that person's views just by magic will be worth more than our own, no matter how much or how often actual events have shown this not to be the case. For us to have this magic thinking about "individualism" then is pernicious politically, intellectually, in every way. That is not to say that we don't value those who can lead the conversation. We'll need them more and more, those "who are able to marshal the wisdom of the network," to use Bob Stein's words. But they might be more like DJs, assembling new ways of looking at things from a huge variety of elements, than like than judges whose processes are secret, and whose opinions are sacred.

Maybe disagreement doesn't have to be a battle to be fought to the death; it can be embraced, even savored. Wikipedia as it is now constituted lends enormous force to this argument. The ability to weigh conflicting opinions dispassionately and without requiring a "decision" is invaluable in understanding almost any serious question.

I'm thinking we can't just get craftier at feeding people. We need to open up spaces where people are freed to find their own hunger.

drafting bold dreams

2011-05-13T18:01:00.001-07:00

drafting bold dreams

View more presentations from monika hardy

what do you think? what would you change? what would you add?

mentors

2011-05-01T19:06:00.000-07:00

the lab's history/mistakes:
The last 2 yrs kids developed a 4 yr plan of disruption for our district. We prototyped, made mistakes, tweaked.
Last year we asked the district if we could have this lab, year 1, where we would connect kids per passion with 1-1 mentors, virtually and/or locally.
What we found this year is, k-12 kids need at least one mentor to be face to face.

our future:
Loveland has plans to work with both - NASA - and Artspace. I'm thinking - hotbed for a good game. A good game to turn our town into one school, one campus, ...of learners, creators, dreamers. A prototype of Dennis's Big Picture taking over a town.
Next year the lab is moving downtown - where like Dennis says, the city can be our floor plan.

wondering:
What if we made a game (Jane McGonigal) that helped cities to connect mentor to student like a match(dot)com in k-12, per passion. We know there are enough mentors in a community to match up with each student. (Dennis is proof.) It's just that few are seeking those connections out - or even believing that it could happen. People just don't know people enough. Perhaps a game would facilitate that. Jump start it. We're imagining if we could make this a fun/easy/useful means to connect, ed would completely change. Change to what Dennis is doing with the Met, yet everywhere.
What if we use something like seeclickfix 's facebook app for local connections..
We're imagining the town's high schools become resource centers, an art hall, an engineering hall, etc. Like a uni campus, learners (all ages, everyone) choosing where to go when and with whom to do what. The glue, the grounding... everyone connected to a mentor (mentor group) they love. No more fake real.

Sugata Mitra's granny cloud idea, but local and individual. Dennis's ed is everyone's business, for the entire community as learners - ie: matching up a 5r old w/a 75 yr old, two 10th graders that can't believe they live in the same town, a 16 yr old w/a 60 yr old..all per passion.

People are constantly talking about ed reform. Like many, the Lab students are creating it and are immersed in it.. and yet - they realize this is worthy of a massive player game. They are so used to being connected and doing things in mass.
We're thinking if we made finding face to face mentors a game, or some kind of shareclickmatch ?... more would be connecting more quickly and we wouldn't be waiting another 5-10-20 years - to see what is possible now.
What's possible now? via Deb Roy - check out esp 12:25 to 13:37 for semantic analysis to find link.

Once girded with a mentor, facilitating passion led learning would be another fascinating game. Chaotic, but now interdependent chaos, within a massive multi-player set of resources.
NCLB can be defined by the learner's network. And it's equitable as long as we pursue digital equity. People wanting to experiment with things beyond their means, and see if their passion fits, find virtual reality space for trying their passion on.

_____________________________

culture of trust

2011-04-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

If we are so inclined to create a culture of trust, I'm thinking it might only happen through disruption. (per Clay Christensen's definition)

A culture of trust won't come through any sales pitch, mandate, or pretty picture. Choice empowers. It fertilizes trust relationships. Just as any agenda messes with the seemingly invisible essence of trust, choice demonstrates an interaction and acknowledgment of human spirit. The more choice you offer me, even if I could fail big time, and probably will often, the more I might just blow you away with my inner drive to give back. This culture, while I believe is our most natural tendency, exists in rarity. Since we now need to regain, rather than just create, this appears no quick fix. We want to push this culture on people. We know it's best. yet, pushing will only build/create a false sense of being there. We'll mindlessly go through the deemed activities of whatever acronym or buzzwords our district/state chooses as an intervention plan. Many will pretend, mimic, but we most likely won't become hungry for more, until it's our choice. Human connection is alluring enough. We need to trust that. We crave belonging. We want to do things that matter and help others.

How do we create a culture of trust? By trusting. By modeling trust in ourselves and in others. By not compromising or giving up when things or people fail. Disruption is difficult because when we’re in the long tail of the increasing exponential curve, we think we’ll never get to a visible upward momentum. It seems we’re not making progress. Our endurance through that long tail without selling out, however, is what will get us to a culture of trust. A culture that redefines the essence of NCLB (no child left behind). One that honors each individual’s choice for what they don’t want to be left behind of.

I've been learning from so many - the importance of cultivating a culture of trust. I believe that will be the change. Once we can stay true to that mission, that's when people will be set free to be themselves.

from Dennis Littky: relationships
I can't believe how much his book, The Big Picture, Ed is Everyone's Business resonates with all we are doing...and planning to do.
The book is a short read, and really does lay out what we're after. Very high recommend. The Met is modeling a culture of trust. Trusting in people, trusting in learning.

from Jane McGonigal: voluntary
Huge piece toward a culture of trust: non- compulsory learning. Yes.. huge, and crazy, but if we want wholehearted participation - it begs to be voluntary. Wondering if a game could jump start our town to model Littky's school, matching up local mentors, internships, so that school isn't even what he calls - fake real.

from Stephen - transparency
I hear this in my head, from my heart, 24/7: transparency is the only currency that can buy trust. That with the ongoing belief that we all want to do good.

from Mark Pesce - choice
The potential of the allure (also Hagel and Brown's Power of Pull) -nothing is for everyone, except maybe the web. Perhaps the web does have something for everyone. With it we can facilitate per choice, matching us up, alluring us with fascination.
From Mark's post: Everything Old is New Again he writes:

We all know Wikipedia, we all know how it works – anyone can edit anything in any article within it – but the wonder of Wikipedia is that it works so well. It’s not perfectly accurate – nothing ever is – but it is good enough to be useful nearly all the time. Here’s the thing: you can come to Wikipedia ignorant and leave it knowing something. You can put that knowledge to work to make better decisions than you would have in your state of ignorance. Wikipedia can help you wise up.
Wikipedia isn’t the only example of shared knowledge. A decade ago a site named TeacherRatings.com went online, inviting university students to provide ratings of their professors, lecturers and instructors. Today it’s named RateMyProfessor.com, is owned by MTV Networks, and has over ten million ratings of one million instructors. This font of shared knowledge has become so potent that students regularly consult the site before deciding which classes they’ll take next semester at university. Universities can no longer saddle student with poor teachers (who may also be fantastic researchers). There are bidding wars taking place for the lecturers who get the highest ratings on the site. This sharing of knowledge has reversed the power relationship between a university and its students which stretches back nearly a thousand years.

from Ewan McIntosh - control
Ewan encourages to give up the reigns. Which takes an enormous amount of trust. Especially in the beginning. None of us are used to free reigns.
To help push us there, Ewan vividly depicts current school-perceptions of engagement:
Ewan writes:

A second problem with the traditional model of engagement stems from its predominantly instrumental applications: engagement as a vehicle to improve student performance or discipline within school. Inevitably, such a mindset constrains success indicators within a compliance model. Students are deemed to be engaged, for example, when/if they:
    •    attend regularly
    •    conform to behavioural norms
    •    complete work in the manner requested and on time
    •    are ‘on-task’
    •    respond to questioning
If we have greater aspirations for students—beyond compliance and toward a commitment to lifelong learning—then the conventional concept of engagement is inadequate.
more at learning futures on engaged learners

[more from Ewan: youth engage me and ewan's take]

from Seth Godin - purpose
If our purpose is off, trust may never show up. So much thinking from Seth, this one will do for now: Are we buying an education or are we buying a brand?
from history:
It's hard to keep up with data on how we spend money.

Take one look at where we're spending it for ed - testing and texts.
As well as the tyranny of the test.
Tests have defined us to our core in ed. We can't even think/talk without defining school as achievement. Achievement is fine, but not when we don't question, achievement of what? And then facilitate that personalization.

Experts seeking solutions for homeless people realize it's not about loss of money, it's about loss of relationships. We need to question and then support what we truly value.

from Sal Khan - reward:

I love Sal Khan, and how he's gifting us with his knowledge. But a recent look at the new badges Khan Academy is now offering and the way schools are using his platform makes me wonder if that will keep us from our potential. At the end of the day, I don't want my kids saying, we did it for a badge, for a grade, for a diploma. I want my kids to not see an end to curiosity and learning. I want them to always be hungry for more. I think for it to be an always thing, we need to not package it, not reward it. We need to trust that if a kid owns it, that will be reward enough.
In another post - Pesce talks about the essence of Wikipedia, that when all the bells and whistles are stripped away - it's all about sharing. What if we trusted that.. as a sharing space vs testing. What if in trusting sharing on the web, we not only could learn whatever and add to that knowledge, but also do it with whomever. What if a new way to test is - have you added or edited wikipedia... if it lasts,... etc. Then there's no package deal. And being a part of something bigger than yourself is the reward.

from Clay Shirky - culture

Shirky's story of the day-care centers brought this home to me, where a fine changed the culture..
In ed, we've all been subjected to the culture of pay for service, our extrinsic motivations.
How do we undo that? How do we get back to the culture of trust... where we act out of respect for a person, a love of learning, rather than an assumed transaction. Where we trust people to do good, rather than seek constant proof.

from Carol Black - culture
Schooling the World is a beautiful movie. It helped me taste the essence of culture. One of their posts - addressing 3 cups of tea - brings a lot of the movie home. Describing how important it is - to not sell out.

from Roger Martin - boldness
This is not easy. There are so many afraid of change, not ready to trust, not comfortable with messy. The pushback is constant. My mantra has been - this is not ridiculous, with the not crossed out and rewritten. Roger set me on a path of boldness. Boldness is huge to building a culture of trust. Respectfully questioning everything, especially since what matters most doesn't fit with the masses who are used to reliability-oriented thinking.

from Brooklyn Free School - direct answers

They are addressing the very questions that compromise a culture of trust. The very questions that tend to get washed out the first time we doubt, or not even brought to the table because so many of us just assume asking them isn't an option.
What are the basics - free school's words
Why common core standards - why do we/must we trust in them?

from Lisa Nielsen - for everyone:
She's brilliant. She's got me wondering if a good start is with those who have lost the most trust in the system, those craving a new culture. Not just the ones that are complaining about the system, but those that have left it?..

from Tony Wagner- trust
Take a look at Finland.

from Will Richardson - network
Learning in a networked world.
1. Do talk to strangers....

from Lyndsay Brant - free
Hacking Higher Ed
Check out the Really Free School

from kids in the lab - just live
We are expecting what we've been seeing.We think what we've seen is the only option. So we're waiting for something like it. ie: Do I want to be a dr or a pilot?
We need to stop expecting/waiting, and start creating. Trust ourselves to make ourselves. Trust that when we follow our fancy to make our passion, we are making ourselves.

from the film I AM:
Most people are other people.Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. -Oscar Wilde

just driving and thinking.. about trust.

_____________________________

lab update

2011-04-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted here for a couple weeks. Perhaps because the last post was so long - incredible stuff - want it to soak in. But also.. so much has been happening, and going on in my head.

This is more of an update than a post, for those who have been asking..

a bit of what the kids have been up to (writing at night and capitalizing so missing some for sure - please add or help edit in comments below):

At last Monday night's Human Trafficking Event - we had over 200. Michelle did an incredible job bringing awareness to an important topic. An intern from United Way writes of the event. (Morgan's optional all-school assembly weeks earlier certainly did the same)
For those of you who don't know - the orchestra performed one of Lucas's songs last week.
Clay and Chase are currently at the World Vex tournament. (Clay won best robot construction.)
Roadnarrows has given Liz a robotic dog to develop an open source curriculum.. very cool way to happen onto programming.
Aimee and Maddie met with Eric Fenner yesterday before he spoke to the Family Consumer Council at the courthouse in Ft Collins. They are looking for loopholes in the law so that we can offer more resources to homeless teens. Will soon be meeting with John Kinnaird with Reflections For Youth - thanks to Ingrid. And hoping to meet soon with Jeri Howe who runs the Matthews House in Ft. Collins. Laure Smith has also been an incredible resource to them as far as legalities.
Gabe & Cristian doing some more dreaming about spaces in Loveland.
Kyla Novak, CSU art student, has added an incredible energy and resources to the lab this semester.
Hans is working with his mentor Patrick on a course they are offering to highschool students for permaculture certification.
Peter attended a conference in Oklahoma, the deaf community wanted to adopt him. We believe he now has the equivalence of year 3, year 4 in sign language.
Lane is working on an online theme park, currently doing cost analysis and advertising.
Aaron is building a TIV.
Jason's created WePLAYE - made the paper, and continues to facilitate fun via facebook and twitter.
Megan is working on a fashion show with Garland photography to raise funds for efforts to serve homeless teens. It will be May 9th above the Garden Room.
Noah H has been working on a documentary with a local homeless man.
Noah D is looking into some legal street art with a city employee, thinking perhaps JR's wish, to share story amongst unlikely connections in town.
Lucy not only got some dog training and artwork in, but has also created an incredibly cool game in Scratch per consulting with her brother Everett.
Everett created his own browser, among other things.
Some couldn't stop learning things, so we got to continually see their methods
Amy and Liz (parents) started their own blogs. Deb should.
Monday nights, we've watched some good movies, had a drum lesson from a local expert drummer, learned about soft circuits from Liz, and game design from Chase, skyped with Jodhbir, ...

never ending ..cool stuff

as well as tough stuff...
It's still a huge struggle for those trying to crank out standard driven coursework in the Lab. And if doing passion in the lab, tough to overcome stress and/or time constraints from other classes/homework/etc.

two big lessons from last school year - where we were doing self-directed math:

Self-directed learning begs per passion rather than per math.
The best growth will come through disruption, through allure, through choice, not sales.

five big lessons from this school year:

Choice empowers self-direction. Learning at its best is voluntary. If taking courses within a given curriculum, it's much better to take them from the experts in our district.
On 1-1 mentors - at least one mentor connection needs to be face to face.
Wikipedia and Youtube seem good spaces to share/validate.
Agendas, even set by the learner, may compromise freedom to wander into unexpectedly incredible findings by the end of the semester/year.
A culture of trust is vital. People trump policy. Transparency is the only currency that can buy trust.

looking toward next year:

Carmen, Ingrid, some of the kids and I have met with Darcy McClure from United Way and Barb Swanson, our district Risk Manager. Trying to work out logistics, liabilities, etc, for next year. We're leaning more towards a separate, non-profit, located down town. Trying to figure out ways to be of most benefit by being both in and out of the system.
I'm meeting with Isaac Graves who helps run the Patchwork School (great 3 videos by Elizabeth Baker - great model) in Louisville and grew up in the free school in new york. can't wait.. I met Isaac when I was asking the guys at the Brooklyn Free School if we could steal their wording from their site - which you can see I added at the bottom of this.

[I keep adding to options. I think we need more. More uni's that accept portfolio's vs gpa/sat/act. Some organization of the doc would be nice. Maybe make it look more like a fact sheet? Unis that offer alt admission and ways to get alt credentials for a job - are what keeps throwing up roadblocks to people that want to break away today. Anya's book this summer should help with that as well.]

I had a lovely meeting with Barry Floyd - who owns the Feed & Grain and Felicia Harmon - who opened the Rialto. They are both delightful and heavily invested in Artspace. They resonated with what we are doing and want to help. I'm meeting with Felicia again next week. Marcie Erion made that connection. Marcie and I met (thank you Cheri) for the first time over spring break. Marcie is finding us local mentors and connections left and right...gardening, zipbike, glass blowing, street art, ...
We are trying to find a job for Jodhbir, who wants to work in the Lab. He wants to share what we are doing with villages in India which is where he is from.
Adam will be student teaching part time in the lab next fall.

Just finished Reality if Broken, by Jane McGonigal (thanks to Jim's suggestion) Jim is brilliant and sees this huge connection to joy and tapping into creativity.. can't wait to see what unfolds from this thinking/focus..
So far, Jim, Adam, Jodhbir, some of the kids and some of the parents in the lab, are reading it. Join us if you like. This could change some things...

Now reading The Big Picture, Education is Everyone's Business, by Dennis Littky and Mindfulness, by Ellen Langer.
[new update: Just finished Littky's book, it's a short read about the Met in Providence which he started 11 years ago. If you're seeking a picture of our focus in the Lab, it's the closest model we've found so far, ie: curriculum is inside each kid, etc.]
On the docket: The Meaning of It All, Feynman, The Playful World, Pesce, and Blessed Unrest, Hawken.

coming up:

James Bach, who's now listed in Wikipedia with notable autodidacts, will be back April 25 & 26, this time with his son Oliver.
Also on the 25th, Jim has invited us to meet with Sasha Barab, as he presents at CSU at 1:30, and then a private session at 3:00.

We are so lucky to be connected to each one of you.
Thank you for helping/joining us ...as we notice the unlikely, dream more boldly, make incredible connections, and do more things that matter.

If you haven't seen it, Allyson Byerly designed the attached poster.
I added it to be you.

non-linearity: a new game

2011-03-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, I posted that we should grab our x-d glasses and take notice of what the web has to offer us. This well announced paradigm shift in education is no fad. This is a monumental change.

So how can we use the web for good? How can we start using tech in ways that make us more human? How can we capture more rich time in our day by letting tech do what it wants, to help us? How can we drink in huge slurping gulps of the web, taking us to the limit, as x approaches the edge, where we can experience several heres at once and not be overwhelmed but rather, come together.
Clay Shirky writes in Here Comes Everybody,

In times of revolution, ...when a real, once-in-a-lifetime change comes along, we are at risk of regarding it as a fad, as with the grown-ups arguing over the pocket calculator. ..
Young people are taking better advantage of social tools, extending their capabilities in ways that violate old models, not because they know more useful things than we do, but because they know fewer useless things than we do.

As we move away from a linear, static, compulsory content, and facilitate a new standard of access, dimensionality becomes huge. Video is huge. Hypertext is huge.

I can't get enough of Mark Pesce's insight as he writes on The Human Network. I see such a fractalian overlay in all he writes, like it's speaking directly to education. From the post Whatever Happened to the Book (per word and per video): [I added some links, and underlining, unless otherwise noted, all quotes in the rest of the blog are from Pesce.]

Networks are the foundation of how we think.
We all crib from one another’s spoken thoughts. It’s the secret to our success.
While the great strength of hypertext is its capability for non-linearity – you can depart from the text at any point – no one had reckoned on the force (really, a type of seduction) of those points of departure. A link is pregnant with meaning, and passing a link by necessarily incurs an opportunity cost.

Consider two different documents.... One of them is an article from the New York Times Magazine. It is long – perhaps ten thousand words – and has, over all of its length, just a handful of links. Many of these links point back to other New York Times articles. This article stands alone. It is a hyperdocument, but it has not embraced the capabilities of the medium. Nearly all articles I could point to from any professional news source portray the same characteristics of separateness and resistance to connect with the medium they employ. ...there is a financial pressure to keep eyes within the website, because attention has been monetized. Every link presents an escape route, and a potential loss of income. Hence, links are kept to a minimum, the losses staunched. Disappointingly, this has become a model for many other hyperdocuments, even where financial considerations do not conflict with the essential nature of the medium. (recall the Day-Care experiment) The tone has been set.

On the other hand, consider an average article in Wikipedia. It could be short or long – though only a handful reach ten thousand words – but it will absolutely be sprinkled liberally with links. Many of these links will point back into Wikipedia, allowing someone to learn the meaning of a term they’re unfamiliar with, or explore some tangential bit of knowledge, but there also will be plenty of links that face out, into the rest of the Web. This is a hyperdocument which has embraced the nature of medium, which is not afraid of luring readers away under the pressure of linkage. Wikipedia is a non-profit organization which does not accept advertising and does not monetize attention.

Without this competition of intentions, Wikipedia is itself an example of another variety of purity, the pure expression of the tension between the momentum of the text and centrifugal force of hypertext.
In most circumstances, we will decline the challenge. Whatever it is, it is not salient enough, not alluring enough. It is not so much that we fear commitment as we feel the pressing weight of our other commitments. We have other places to spend our limited attention.

When i saw Gary Flake intro getpivot on his TED talk, I resonated with the x-dimensionality legit web offers us for better conversation and collaboration, the navigation needed to till Clay Shirky's cognitive surplus. Our peek at and ensuing test trial at self-directed learning in public ed. More from Pesce:

At this point a question needs to be asked: what’s so electronic about an electronic book? If I open the Stanza application on my iPhone, and begin reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, I am presented with something that looks utterly familiar. Too familiar. This is not an electronic book. This is ‘publishing in light’. I believe it essential that we discriminate between the two, because the same commercial forces which have driven links from online newspapers and magazines will strip the term ‘electronic book’ of all of its meaning.

I'm curious if some of the project-based learnings, no doubt some of our best experiences existing today, resemble Pesce's publishing in light. An incredible improvement, but does it strip self-directed learning of it's purest potential. Is it truly self-directed. Have we redefined self-directed learning to be self-directed within a given learning. Could that small change create a vast difference in the adjacent possibilities to a learner? Not to mention even the slightest decrease of intrinsic motivation.

These questions are important – essential – if we want to avoid turning living typeset texts into dead texts published in light. That act of murder would give us less than we had before, because the published in light texts essentially disavow the medium within which they are situated. They are less useful than typeset texts, purposely stripped of their utility to be shoehorned into a new medium. This serves the economic purposes of publishers – interested in maximizing revenue while minimizing costs – but does nothing for the reader. Nor does it make the electronic book an intrinsically alluring object. That’s an interesting point to consider, because hypertext is intrinsically allurng.
The reason for the phenomenal, all-encompassing growth of the Web from 1994 through 2000 was because it seduced everyone who has any relationship to the text. If an electronic book does not offer a new relationship to the text, then what precisely is the point? Portability? Ubiquity? These are nice features, to be sure, but they are not, in themselves, overwhelmingly alluring. This is the visible difference between a book that has been printed in light and an electronic book: the electronic book offers a qualitatively different experience of the text, one which is impossibly alluring.

I see such comparisons: Britannica to PBL, or to most things we see as ed fixes, to the national curriculum even; and wikipedia to self-directed learning. Should I see that? Do you?
I see it as compromising the opportunity we now have to actually be facilitating a self-directed learning. To students actually taking over.
We're doing a lot of things today, in a scramble to do good, to do better. But are they the best?
(and gosh, this is another story, but why can't we even just stand up to what we know to be the worst?)

We shouldn't try to constrain our idea of what an electronic book can be based upon what the book has been. Over the next few years, our innovations will surprise us. We won't really know what the electronic book looks like until we've had plenty of time to play with them.
Yet we come to books with a sense of commitment. We want to finish them. But what, exactly do we want to finish? The electronic book must necessarily reveal the interconnectedness of all ideas, of all writings – just as the Web does. So does an electronic book have a beginning and an end? Or is it simply a densely clustered set of texts with a well-defined path traversing them? From the vantage point of 2010 this may seem like a faintly ridiculous question.

Perhaps in our urges to match learning to core standards, to at least have some say in some sort of parameter, some sort of rubric, we are limiting the very essence of intrinsic motivation and authentic learning. Perhaps our best move would be to forgo the urge to manage, the urge to validate, by simply asking and showing each other, what we have learned. No beginning. No end. Just always.

What ever happened to the book? It exploded in a paroxysm of joy, dissolved into union with every other human thought, and disappeared forever. This is not an ending, any more than birth is an ending. But it is a transition, at least as profound and comprehensive as the invention of moveable type. It’s our great good luck to live in the midst of this transition, astride the dilemmas of hypertext and the contradictions of the electronic book. Transitions are chaotic, but they are also fecund. The seeds of the new grow in the humus of the old. (And if it all seems sudden and sinister, I’ll simply note that Nietzsche said that new era nearly always looks demonic to the age it obsolesces.)

Jim and I started discussing logging/mapping as a means to monitor growth. Since what we're doing, a huge piece of the paradigm shift, is experimenting, we are always trying things, and reflecting, and often failing, and changing things up. We started out logging per google doc. Upon watching kids, we started to wonder about video logging, tagging convos. We looked into Roger Schank's just in time stories, imagining that getpivot type navigation to create even more serendipitous connections. Can we create serendipity? Can we sophisticate our virtual meet ups to the point we feel like we just left the coffee house? With the benefit of streamlined recall? On those connections that matter?

Finally, there is another path open for the literary text, one which refuses to ignore the medium that constitutes it, which embraces all of the ambiguity and multiplicity and liminality of hypertext. direction (like ed)
As texts become electronic, as they melt and dissolve and link together densely, meaning multiplies exponentially. Every sentence, and every word in every sentence, can send you flying in almost any direction. The tension within this text (there will be only one text) will make reading an exciting, exhilarating, dizzying experience...
As our texts become one, as they become one hyperconnected mass of human expression, that new thing will become synonymous with culture. Everything will be there, all strung together. And that’s what happened to the book.

Deb Roy's recent TED talk brings the abilities of the web out of the closet even more.

A picture of what we can do now.. seamlessly. Gyrating from the vertical to the horizontal at whim, sophisticated zooming in and out, we're in the system, we're out of the system, we're large, we're small.

And without us even thinking it's work, or that we're doing it, or forcing it.

Is what tech wants for us, that we can just be? And that the freedom from just being, the extra time/money/energy from letting tech work the chaos, is allowing us to notice things we've been blinded to - for all the order we thought we craved - we were missing mindfulness.

Emergent value and life in perpetual beta.. how lucky are we?

Hagel’s writes on the neurobiology of passion: -

Scientific research increasingly demonstrates that our brain wiring patterns can be significantly shaped by where we choose to focus our attention, particularly if we can sustain that focus over an extended period of time.

So this freedom, this space we're now given, to notice more, makes us rich.
It's tough to let go, and trust. But the potential is huge.. which makes good risky.

When there is a revolution going on, ... net value is useless, since the society before and after the revolution are too different to be readily compared.
Our principle challenge isn't in deciding where we want to go, but in staying upright as we go there.
Instead of each member of the group tracking favors from each other member directly, certain kinds of help simply become social norms.

This does not mean there will be no difficulties associated with out new capabilities - the defenders of freedom have long noted that there are problems peculiar to freer societies. Instead it assumes that the value of freedom outweighs the problems, not based on a calculation of net value, but because freedom is the right thing to want for a society.

-Clay Shirky Here Comes Everybody

Nothing is for everybody. Which is why this non-fad happening is so extremely cool. We can now facilitate that. We can now offer everything,... in public ed.

My new friend, Dale, shares his his Poke the Box thinking:

Time is not money. Time is time. You could spend time making money, but you could also spend time changing the world—it’s up to you.
Time is irreplaceable.

You are irreplaceable.
Don't waste either.

The unfinished project is alluringly waiting for us.

I’m currently reading Richard Restak’s The New Brain, and more of Pesce’s blog - The Human Network.

____________________________________

solution

2011-03-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

So much talk. So little time. Such important business.
We can. We shall.

An overdo revisit of the brilliantly graceful Bill Strickland.

If you want to make a difference in the lives of people most have given up on..
you have to look like the solution more than the problem.

An email from a friend about an upcoming film:

They have signed the air with an individual presence that honors
both the film and the education they are getting." -- Jay Featherstone,

Ongoing conversations in the Lab:

How can we make change happen. Laws are so tight, it all seems so daunting.

More insight into last weeks post regarding the Mad Cow Protests..

2003: South Korea bans American beef imports – mad cows disease.

2008: Korean President Lee Myung-bak lifts ban.

Korean citizens stage Korea’s first family-friendly protest. It lasts over a month.

Over half the protesters are teenage girls.

Why?

DBSK, a boy band.

DBSK’s online site, with nearly a million users, provided these girls with an opportunity to discuss whatever they wanted, including politics.

Massed together, frightened and angry that Lee’s government had agreed to what seemed a national humiliation and a threat to public health, the girls decided to do something about it.

When kids who are too young to vote are out in the street protesting policies, it can shake governments used to a high degree of freedom from public oversight.

When teenage girls can help organize events that unnerve national governments, without needing professional organization or organizers to get the ball rolling, we are in new territory.

And again, as Mimi Ito describes the protesters,

Their participation in the protests was grounded less in the concrete conditions of their everyday lives, and more in their solidarity with a shared media fandom… Although so much of what kids are doing online may look trivial and frivolous, what they are doing is building the capacity to connect, to communicate, and ultimately, to mobilize. .. What’s distinctive about this historical moment and today’s rising generation is not only a distinct form of media expression, but how this expression is tied to social action.

- Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus

How can we be sure what we offer to people won't just get abused, misused?

We can't.
ie:
One of our dreams is to offer a zipbike (or ziplaptop) program, where we have several recycled/donated bikes that we paint, say green. People know they are for free use, especially for kids to get to and from the Lab. So they borrow them when needed. Return them when found/possible. More important than transportation, we hope to model a bigger dream of sharing.
In the 1960's, Amsterdam tried this very thing. They painted theirs white. Their manifesto: The white bicycle symbolizes simplicity and healthy living, as opposed to the gaudiness and filth of the authoritarian automobile.
Clay Shirky writes in Here Comes Everybody,
The White Bicycle program would have been just another footnote in the Age of Aquarius, but for one detail: it was an almost instant failure. Within a month all the bicycles had either been stolen or thrown in the canals.
Shirky goes on to say that many since have resurrected the idea, those successful have placed restrictions on the use of the bikes with locked sheds and ID cards for checking them out. He says, given the opportunity to misbehave, and little penalty for doing so, enough people's behavior becomes antisocial enough to wreck things for everyone. A basic truth of social systems: no effort at creating group value can be successful without some form of governance.

But we can't not offer. And offer again. And again. And again.

More from Shirky, Cognitive Surplus
In 1998, Gneezy and Rustichini set out to test a theory of the affect one simple change has on a culture.
The culture, 10 day-care centers in the Israeli city of Haifa. The simple change, a late pick up fee.
Before the change, the 10 centers experienced only 7-8 late pick ups in a normal week. After a penalty at 6 of the centers, a fine of approx $3 if more than 10 min late. Immediately, the lateness increased. Increasing to 11 the first week, 14 the next, and 17 after that, topping off at about 20. Even after the fine was dropped, late pick-ups remained high.
The pre-fine bargain between parents and teachers was what Gneezy and Rustichini labeled an “incomplete contract.” Once the fine was instituted, the ambiguity collapsed.. Turning the day care from a shared enterprise into a simple fee-for-service transaction, allowing the parents to regard the workers’ time as a commodity. The parents assumed the fine represented the full price of the inconvenience they were causing, and it seemed to remove any fears that they might suffer some unspecified consequence for abusing the workers’ goodwill. Parents saw the day-care workers as participants in a market transaction, rather than as people whose needs had to be respected.

We're building a culture.
We're building a culture on trust relationships.
It will take time. It will hurt.
But it will sign the air with a presence,
and it will look like the solution more than the problem.

We can. We shall.

___________________________________

connect ed

2011-03-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

A lot went on in my head this week. Hold tight.

Ignore the following and just take a look at what resulted from it: connect ed

First:

My friend Chad started a great conversation here. I believe he is especially spot on when he says:

but our kids need an ocean of information into which they can dive and from which they can drink in huge, slurping gulps that look somehow vulgar or excessive to us.

Second:

I'm reading Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus. (I thought his TED on it was enough. Silly me. There's so much I needed to hear from the book.) When he talks about the mad cow protest in Seoul, where the teenage girls took over, he quotes Mimi Ito, and I'm going to blatantly quote it all here, it's that huge:

Their participation in the protests was grounded less in the concrete conditions of their everyday lives, and more in their solidarity with a shared media fandom... Although so much of what kids are doing online may look trivial and frivolous, what they are doing is building the capacity to connect, to communicate, and ultimately, to mobilize. From Pokemon to massive political protests, what's distinctive about this historical moment and today's rising generation is not only a distinct form of media expression, but how this expression is tied to social action.

Shirky goes on to say:

Digital tools were critical to coordinating human contact and real-world activity.. when communications tools are in new hands, they take on new characteristics.

and earlier Shirky writes:

During the protests in South Korea, though, media stopped being just a source of information and became a locus of coordination as well.
The atomization of social life in the twentieth century left us so far removed from participatory culture that when it came back, we needed the phrase "participatory culture" to describe it.

Third:

My friend Ian, posted this, and I think that it approaches what tech through the web is trying to provide for us.
Intimate conversation with any gathering, anyone, anywhere, at any time.

I think we are approaching a dimensionality in our conversations we've not yet experienced. One where we not only come together per passion, but also in grace and deep respect. One where more can be said, because in our new found security of intimate community, we spend less time with defense. ( http://pds8.egloos.com/pds/200... ) so more can be understood. one where less needs to be said, because more is understood. (http://www.ascd.org/publicatio... )

I'm wondering how deep we can take this.
I'm wondering with our new abilities with web connections, do we even need measurement?..

Does conversation trump and change everything?

is now the work - we used to go to 9-5 - to get our monetary reward...
the work of being a part of something?

Fourth:

Steve's and Michael's work (my fav so far) seem to be innately lobbying for value and validation of tacit knowledge, over standardized tests, etc.
They both appear to have started their projects as a means to project student voice. And as per usual, student voice is filled with honesty, innovation and insight we often miss.
Students are sharing how they learn. They are sharing what matters most. They are sharing what indwells in them, or, in many of the videos, that which doesn't indwell in them.
To me.. this is a call out for free space where indwelling in experience is not only allowed but hailed and facilitated. And where creativity abounds in ways to expose that experience, that tacit knowledge.

I also think JR's project could poignantly promote more student voice in communities, more conversations, more sharing of story.

I believe Chad's suffocation is serving us well. I think it's zooming us out, back to ourselves, back community, back to humanity. We need some tech savvy's to hurry along what i believe tech wants: Intimate conversation with any gathering, anyone, anywhere, at any time.

I also finally shipped - how to be a mentor/facilitator.

in memory..

tacit knowledge

2011-02-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

I slept 12 hours last night.
No really.
Currently, I'm blaming it on tacit knowledge and my ability to fail.

After co-learning, aka, The Colorado Conversation, I was exhilarated, but also extremely spent.
The exhilaration part: Meeting up with incredible people seeking to improve today. I love that. What can we do now? For everyone? Because there's an urgency when we're talking human life.
The spent part: Frustration with inability to share what's in my head/heart. Noticing my failure to keep focused on what matters most.

In prepping for the conference, I wanted to have something ready, a prezi, to give people a picture of what the lab is about, what our innovation space is about, no matter what happened in that hour we were together in a room.
The fact that we now have the ability to personalize in public ed, allowing everyone the option to define their own success, and start doing what matters most to them, today, is what I'm most crazy about. If we allow ourselves to zoom out, above all the chaos, and see that the ginormous landscape of adjacent possibilities (Steven Johnson) is offering us simplicity, public ed can be the vehicle to social change. It's huge. It's humane. It's urgent.

I see it in my head so clearly. I feel a responsibility to help make it happen. I feel a huge responsibility to lobby for free space, for all learners, no labels. I dream about people drowning in the chaos, but the words don't cut through, the buoy won't quite reach. I need to work on that. Somehow.

So, I was thinking a prezi might help. Yeah. Silly me.

What I missed during that prep, was more voices. What a loss.
It's got me wondering about documentation as we know it. It's got me wondering about platforms and such. I'm really feeling like What Tech Wants (Kevin Kelly) is for us to document less, worry about ownership and privacy less, and live more. To trust that in living, what matters most, resides within, and no one can take that away. But even greater, that in giving it away, we become rich.
I do believe youtube is driving innovation/learning/passion. (Chris Anderson) I think video, 3-d documentation is again, what tech wants and allows us. I'm thinking if we combine video and conversation, and other things I'm not even thinking of, together in a sophisticated way, that allows for zooming in and out so that we keep our senses about us and about our focus/perception, we may start creating ways to expose tacit knowledge.
[post via Jim on tacit knowledge - we're also discussing it on facebook, search: tsd innovation lab]
How do we create ways to expose/validate/share our tacit knowledge?
I think this discussion is a great place for us to be, as we figure out a world of do. Thank you Jim for getting it going.
Cool find from Adam on tacit knowledge.
Ah. Huge grazie to Nic - another brilliant film to bring it home.

THE TRAIN TO KYOTO from Nic Askew on Vimeo.

The prep I'm referring to is the prezi from last week's post. [Now public, Lyndy, I think that's why you couldn't access it. my bad.] It does have the pathways now. Maybe give it another look see, would love some feedback.

adding a great post via Bonnie Bracey Sutton on tacit - formal vs informal

_____________________________

options

2011-02-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

Jim and I got to hear Anya Kamenetz share her expertise with a group of parents at Colorado Academy. (full rough notes here)
Three things she said that I'd like to pass on.

1) Anya started her talk with these stats:
45% - no significant gains 1st 2 years of college
36% - no significant gains over 4 years of college
During the q&a at the end, one person asked, how do you assess the merit of the content? (when a student is left to own their learning)
Anya suggested we remember the black box, where we are now, how "successful" we are now, when we're trying to decide if change is worth the risk. Perhaps in bypassing our tendency to play defense, we'll have plenty of energy to define and pursue our own success.

2) Another question from q&a - as an employer, how do you start to evaluate students?
Anya's response was that co-evolution has to take place:

institutions who's basis is assessment, per specialization, you pay to get reliable vouching
portfolio - where you can see the work
reputation - large % of hiring here, has been this way before

Anya had addressed reputation in her talk, where she shared the option of professional networks in lieu of diplomas. She sited Scott Belky's Behance network, as an example, where companies are recruiting straight off this website. She noted that we rely on reputation based systems more than priests and doctors. She also not that LinkedIn has 90 million members, with a data driven career planning built in.

3) One of the best statements I believe Anya made that I wish everyone could not only hear, but drink it in:

A lot of students make career based decisions based on too little info.

I believe that is what Will Richardson is after in his call for a parent's back to school night and what Lisa Nielsen is after in this recent project and post.
And it's what we're after in working on a doc to share options. (please jump in and help, if you're so inclined)

Anya's first book DIY U, was a gold mine for me, especially all the resources she listed in chapter 4. She's just announced her latest project here. She's given us higher ed options for learning, and next she'll grace us with higher ed options for credential.

Along the same lines, Michael Walker tweeted this out today:
“Targeted at parents, teachers and anyone concerned with education in America, this documentary takes viewers to the front lines of an education revolution. "Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century" examines how mobile devices and digital media practices can empower young people to direct their own learning. Documenting five success stories both inside and out of the classroom, the program demonstrates how digital media, games, smart phones and the Internet are fundamentally transforming the way young people communicate, collaborate, participate and learn in the 21st century.”

Watch the full episode. See more Digital Media - New Learners Of The 21st Century.

__________________________________________________________________________________

imagine and play

2011-02-14T08:50:00.000-08:00

John Seely Brown and Doug Thomas recently released a new book that I'm dying to get my hands on, A New Culture of Learning.
I heard about it from John Hagel (who co-authored The Power of Pull with Brown).
Hagel's review is a super read. Yeah, you should maybe read it.

It encouraged me to start working on this:

Then my friend Adam, sent me the link to Gever Tulley's latest project, his summer tinkering camps are going full school fall 2011. This is very exciting. I see similarity with their arc or one-of-a-kind k-12 curriculum and our detox.

It encouraged me to start working on this.

As per usual.. would love your insight.

_____________________________

structure

2011-02-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

Insight from James Bach aka @jamesmarcusbach :
What is structure..

I think structure means pattern.

But when people say it pointedly they often mean a pattern that is imposed.
Sometimes, they mean a pattern that they can see, or name.
And sometimes they mean a pattern that directs and confines.
So when people say - I like structure, I like to check whether that means
"I like to be told what to do"
or
"I like to tell other people what to do"
or
"I like to be able to explain and justify what I'm doing"
Each of these are different.

The thing is
all things have structure!

A room full of kids has a structure
even without telling them what to do.
They will be structured by their feelings toward each other,
and toward the objects in the room,
and their beliefs about justice and fairness,
and their cultural expectations,
and the roles they choose for themselves,,
and what they had for breakfast,
and whether they had a fight with their siblings before school,
and prior agreements,
and what happened yesterday,
and the things adults do that they witness,
etc.

We watch the kids,
feel what's going on,
diagnose problems, if any,
provide support if requested.

If the kids are constrained by a lot of imposed ideas, that disturbs the system and makes it hard to see what's happening.

It's as if you were trying to understand the psychology of a child solely
by watching them play chess.
That's a lot of structure.
But chess is not a very expressive experience.
I think basically, the problem for a lot of us is that we just don't believe kids are healthy humans who instinctively seek their own growth.
But one thing is that one person's organization/structure is another person's muddle.
We can't know what's really happening for the kids
inside their heads.
We do have to trust in the wisdom of the growing mind.
ie: Everett and Chase.

Great post and comment by Zac Chase @mrchase in regard to this here:
I’m not sure where it’s going or what it will become.

And great post and comment by Kate Fridkis @EatTheDamnCake in regard to his here:

You can’t be captured. You can’t be rated. You can’t be conveniently categorized.

If someone tries to do these things to you, they clearly don’t understand very much about being alive.

And sage advice to stoke our boldness factor from Ewan McIntosh @ewanmcintosh here:
In the UK, we have the world's least happy children. In the US, the number prescribed Ritalin is growing to frightening rates, and correlates to standardised testing. In Finland, home of Western Europe's ‘best’ education system, we see its highest suicide rate (note the ranking of South Korea & Japan, too).
We have an ongoing contentment problem, and the answer to it lies in helping young people discover what their passions are, giving up the artificial reins we as teachers, parents and governments use to strangle those passions and the creativity that lends itself to their growth.

Try to experience a bit of abandon this week. Try to dabble a bit in finding you.

_____________________________________________________

Tomorrow night, Liz will be sharing some soft circuit ideas. Check the events page to the right for more details and a short trailer.

_____________________________________________________

choice

2011-01-31T00:08:00.000-08:00

I'm convinced more than anything else, choice is the ultimate empowerment. Authentic change will only happen when it's an individual experience per choice.

I believe that often our assumptions about human nature, what success is, and how viable current practices are, keep us from living.
Assumptions are a choice. We make them daily by our actions, (or non-action), whether we acknowledge it or not.
If we desire what's best for us, for our kids, for the world, we should respectfully and gracefully question everything. No?

On human nature:

Many of us have come to believe that if we aren't given directions we won't be able to accomplish things. We have become insecure in our own abilities to create, to learn/innovate. Curiosity and the ability to self-construct are natural, but we have grown so accustomed to compliancy from outside regulation that most of us generally assume they are not natural. Often we don't invest in curiosity. Often we unconsciously mock passion. We see them as ridiculous or at least superfluous.

"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music." - Angela Monet

On success:

The web now allows for personalization in public education, with that comes the responsibility, in public ed, to allow for personalized definitions of success. This is great news. This is incredible news. We no longer have to plan/fight for survival or sustainability or even efficiency. We can now choose to thrive, to become indispensable.

On current practices:

We have come through, (many still reside in), an age of knowledge acquisition, where at the end of the day, how much you knew defined you. The potential today however, is to move beyond this static acquisition of fixed content, into life. At the end of the day, what you do, and the community you do it with, defines you. (humanity 4.0 - esp notice slide 68)
In this new environment, in this knowledge flow, we have the opportunity to learn faster by working together in addressing challenges that draw on the *tacit knowledge of each person. This is an opportunity that none of the current leaders of the commercial Internet understand, much less address. There is a **white space here. - John Hagel

The bottom line, you get to choose who you are.
It's your choice.

What we're seeking here in the Lab, for the community of Thompson School District, for anyone so inclined in the world, is more free space to individually venture out and make personal choices.
We believe that is how individuals/communities will thrive.
Great post from Zac Chase @mrchase on choice.

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who come alive. -Howard Thurman

Kevin on the energy happening in spaces that choices are made.

__________________________________

*tacit knowledge -
Let’s start with the observation that the growing avalanche of data increasingly distracts us from something far more valuable. Here’s the paradox, as data proliferates, something else becomes more and more valuable and yet more difficult to access. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge deeply embedded in each of us, our relationships and our unique contexts. It is the knowledge that we find most challenging to articulate and communicate. As seen in the link above, John suggests, in order to thrive, we exist in this tacit knowledge, build trust based relationships, and pursue our unique talent development.

**If this idea of a white space interests you, recommended readings:

John Hagel's posts, in particular: Finding Stability at the Core of Change and The Neurobiology of Passion
Lisa Nielsen's post: 10 ways to support self-directed learning
Kate Fridkis on learning to read.

The book I'm currently reading/loving: Wounded by School, Kirsten Olson

__________________________________________

Tonight, Jan 31, Liz will share some innovations with clothing and technology, soft circuits. See events on right panel for more.
There will be food. And more than likely an incredibly exhilarating 10 min film.
nevermind.. bumping this to next week due to weather.
enjoy your snow day manana.

lucy

2011-01-26T16:03:00.001-08:00

1) notice - i love dogs

2) dream - i'm a dog trainer

3) connect - to Maddie, who showed me how to train her dog

4) do - i went home and trained my dog and made a how to slideshare

Dog training presentation

View more presentations from Amy Lewark.

people

2011-01-22T23:57:00.000-08:00

Looking back over this last week, there were quite a lot of thinkings and convos on people.

Short people:
Lyndy graciously took notes as she and Jason and Lucas and I hashed out some thinking on the short people we want to include in our lab experimentations next year. She wrote up an original version of this, which we turned into a google doc that is open and editable. Please join us as we develop visions for a start-up space for pre-k through 5th grade. A flexible, malleable space to foster curiosity and imagination. A space to let short people dream. Take a listen to Adora Svitak, 13 yrs old, as she talks about dreams.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats it’s children. -Nelson Mandela

People convos:
We are all different, yet we all desire good.
If we believe that, if we try to live that, we will save so much energy. We spend so much time defending, belittling, fluffing, assuming, yet we have no idea.
What if we can just start assuming one thing, that we all want good.
What if when we feel unsettled about any form/point of conversation, we choose to believe, that perhaps, it's not that any one person is good or bad, but that perhaps, we just haven't really communicated yet.
What if we continually ask ourselves, is respect for every voice a part of my soul..

Green people:
You can find many amazing things people are doing today to be green, about the earth, the air, the water, ...
What if we spent that much time and energy and resources on being green about people?
What if we considered wisdom and experts in unlikely paces, like grandparents, local entrepreneurs, homeless people, other students, parents?
Wouldn't we be afforded more for less?
Wouldn't those unlikely people start to release they matter?
Wouldn't those learners start to realize what matters most?
To them?

Info is now in people, (cognitive surplus, humanity 4.0)
The focus is now on the conversation, and the community.
So the web has the potential to tear us apart, just like anything in excess.
But the web, for the first time ever, is allowing us to come closer together than we ever have before. It's allowing us be ourselves through connecting to others.

We're thinking the movie for this week will be Horton Here's a Who, per short people request. If you've have already seen the movie and want to just join us after for the convo, it will be a student-led beginning as soon as the movie ends, approximately 8pm.

We've requested to host a screening for Race-to Nowhere on Feb, 7. We will let you know as soon as it is official.
We are being supported by Barnes & Noble through this Friday, Feb 28. Anything ordered at a B&N store or online sends us a portion of their proceeds. At our store at Centerra, you can just say for the InnovationLab, but the official code is 10377299, for online or any other store.

Have a great week guys. Notice people, our best resource.

be. bold.

2011-01-15T11:22:00.000-08:00

I read Roger Martin's Design of Business about 2 years ago. What his words spoke to me then, in large part, has been the backbone of the boldness that has gotten us to where we are today in the Lab.

On taking note of what plenty of my conversations are about these days, I feel a revisit is in order. I want to share Roger's thinking with you here. I believe if we understand what typically discourages us from the very things we seek, we have a better chance of moving forward with boldness. Today.

The videos that follow are from Roger's talk/interview with Bruce Nussbaum, (who is amazing as well), November 2009 at Parsons, New School. I used SnipSnip.It to break the 1:18:08 min video down so you could listen per your choice/time.
Roger is brilliant. His message is huge. It will change you if you let it sink in. Perhaps, take it in smaller doses. If you'd rather, here's the video in it's entirety. I've also included his main slides at the end, (thanks to Michael Dila) for those of you who are visual and/or notetakers.

Roger intro'ing what he plans to talk about (3:36 - 7:00 from original)

cropped with SnipSnip

Roger explaining his Knowledge Funnel, our path of understanding (7:00 to 11:25 in the original, slides 2-5 below), super great explanation, zoom out, of what we do.

cropped with SnipSnip

Why the Knowledge Funnel? - Efficiency. (10:57 to 14:20 in original)

cropped with SnipSnip

Pros and Cons of Efficiency. (14:15 to 19:00 in original)

cropped with SnipSnip

What is design thinking? Analytical vs Intuitive, Reliability vs Validity (18:46-29:35 in original, slides 6&7)

cropped with SnipSnip

Five Productive Steps for Designing in Hostile Territory (29:40-39:00 in original, slide 8)

cropped with SnipSnip

The Design of Business - Roger Martin

View more presentations from Michael Dila.

What if we start playing offense? What if we take this knowledge and (pretend even at first) we're bold? I'm guessing that gives you at least 70% of your time/energy back.

I'm hoping this boldness will allow people to just be. I'm hoping this boldness will allow public ed to give brilliant people like Kate Fridkis an open ear, rather than a heavily guarded ear.

Check "events" on top right panel - 3 happening this week.
Have a refreshingly bold week. Enjoy/notice people and what matters most.

{For any of you interested, I cross-posted this post on the Cooperative Catalyst. I've been a part of them since July. Super people. They would love to have parents, students, admin voices. Let me know if you'd like to join. You are more than welcome to just read, or read and comment, without joining.}

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unschooling

2011-01-09T23:56:00.000-08:00

I met up with Kate Fridkis (also thanks to Lisa Nielsen). I have been reading her blog posts daily. Some of my favs:
5 things I learned about boredom from homeschooling
3 reasons why homeschooling rocks
It's good to be weird
The trouble with being exceptional
Siblings
On taking standardized tests

I finished a draft of - how to do the seemingly impossible. Would love your insight/additions (last 2 slides have a space for you to add). If the print is too small for you, hit "view on slideshare" - bottom right.

i'm possible

View more presentations from monika hardy.

Now working on - how to be a mentor.

Just watched The Philosopher Kings. Loved it. Showing it tonight, 7pm. Check events on right column for more info. Wisdom in unlikely places.

The kids are doing incredible things. Ask them about what they're up to. Their blogs are along the right hand side. Read them. Comment on them.

We shared what we're doing in the lab with the Youth Advisory Council last Wednesday. They (about 15 teens from the district) are interested in our thinking about a teen homeless shelter. We are gaining insight from homeless in Loveland and Doug Ashbaugh, who manages the shelters. Let us know if you'd like to be a part of this incredible learning experience. I believe it's going to transform our community. Unlikely connections coming together, for good.

Notice something unlikely/unexpected this week. Every day.

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happy new year

2011-01-03T16:37:00.000-08:00

Hope you had a great break. Lots of celebrating. Lots of resting. Lots of friends and family.
But most of all - soul peace.
I love holidays, but I also love that we can celebrate that everyday....

This week - take a peek at Schooling the World if you are so inclined. [download link]
An incredible film. I would recommend you not only watch it for the obvious global implications, but also for the implications to our community and to each one of us as individuals.
Also Lisa Nielsen's brilliant post unearthing some incredible Unschoolers. Unschooled 101 a great read.

This Saturday we'll be a part of another global online conference. The second Reform Symposium.
[Link to our keynote from the first Symposium, August 1, here]
This one is for new teachers. We get to be a part of a panel discussing parent involvement.
Would absolutely love to have any of you join. It's 3:30-4:30, Jan 8, right from your own computer. Link here.
George Couros, Amanda Henson, and our own Jim Folkestad will be a part of the panel. I will be there and they are requesting one student to join in. I would love to have as many of you join us that can, parents, students, admin.
It's a fun experience. You can just listen, add comments and/or questions to the chat, or take the mike if you're so inclined.

What I am working on, per James Bach's suggestion,
1) a slideshare on how to do the seemingly impossible, would love your insight per a 2-5 min video.
2) a slideshare on how to be a mentor

Would love your insight per a 2-5 minute video on either.
Also would love insight per 2-5 minute on parent involvement.

I'm still learning google calendar, here's what i posted there if you can't get in. Movie night - from the comfort of your home:

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the Lab

2010-12-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

Latest articles, ideas, thinking...

1. Passion gaining Validity
This smooth read by Lisa explains much of what we're seeking for learners.

2. Curriculum Crunching, Enrichment Cluster, and Total Talent Portfolios
All three are very connected to our vision. The portfolio info will help us to amp our current practice.

3. A Lab vs a School - unleashing inquiry and imagination, and individualism
As a Lab, we can keep funding at current buildings in the district. The lab as a choice within the system, not in competition with.

4. NASA looking at Loveland at HP - and how we might encourage that.
Whether or not the Lab would share a space with NASA at HP, the increased mentorships and experiences that would come with and gather because of NASA would benefit all learnings in Loveland.

Huge thanks to Lyndy for great connections/insight/readings...
Lyndy is helping to craft/improve this slideshare..
and this proposal...
would love your input as well.

We presented this slideshare at the Global Ed Conference.
If glancing through slideshares or links prompts questions/suggestions/insight.. please share it in the box to the right. Usefulness is a huge goal.

Ewan McIntosh

2010-12-22T05:43:00.000-08:00

Ewan is a new follow for me thanks to Lyndy.

Things i found and spent time watching, reading through yesterday are here.
The find from today, I think is a good launch for those who want to get a better look at why we need to see schooling differently.

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2010-12-21T20:26:00.001-08:00

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