"Passions shift in young people. This defies programing."

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called The Real Disruptive Innovation where I toyed with the thought that the real reason online schools are a disruptive innovation in education is because they allow students to place priority on their own interests and passions and do their "school work" on their own time. In that post I shared this video done by a boy who was using YouTube to ask the world for help in building his bow-drill set.


The video and the comment stream it generated illustrate the power social media and web 2.0 have in amplifying the power and effectiveness of informal learning. I would like to highlight a great and thoughtful comment on that post that I think sums it all up nicely:

Jan said...

In reply to DC's comment: to give a bit of context to the boy in the video, he's my son, Nelson. The video was made on his own two years ago when he was 12. He did the editing himself on Windows Movie Maker. He got some instruction from me during past "projects" but also from YouTube videos he searched out on his own. I helped him upload it. The tagging part was about all I had to teach him.

He filmed it in our backyard, I believe it was on a school night after dinner. He had tried previous fires a bit closer to our back door which caused a bit of angst, but this one was attempted away from the building. We live a suburban setting but we are 15 minutes to wilderness so Nelson has done a fair amount of camping. The woods around his elementary school were a favourite hang-out; I think the green space has been essential to developing his interest in nature. Also important is our love of the outdoors and interest in natural history. Nelson also used (and still does use) YouTube as a primary learning source. He hunted for and found sites on bushcraft and survival. Then he begged his dad to go to the woods where he tried and failed to get a fire started.

Nelson is in a regular public school and has benefit from all the good that the model offers. As a teacher myself I have never been under the illusion that the education of my son was only the school's responsibility. We share it, but it is primarily Nelson's job. If he has a passion we encourage him to follow it. This is why bowdrills are on the shelf for now and painting with water colours, proper playing technique on the tenor sax, making bows and arrows, and solving obstacles in video games has taken over. Passions shift in young people. This defies programing.

YouTube is often his first stop when he wants to know something. This includes "school" topics like how viaducts affected the development of Roman civilization and how digestion works. Sadly, YouTube is blocked in our district.

Nelson's school teachers do matter to him and they have more than once ignited his curiosity. However, most would be surprised to know that he learns so much online. For the most part his technology experiences have been fairly flat (go to this site and do x, or make a video that shows y), but this is slowly improving.

Thanks, Carl for your post. Nelson is ready to shut down comments to the video as "it is so last year", but I have encouraged him to keep it open as an experiment in the good of the network. So many comments on YouTube make me gag, but the comments are so generous and will be a great resource to him when he finally gets back to exploring bow drills and fire starting again.

*Thanks @bookminder for pointing me to this :)

Thank you Jan.

PLN Integration #edtech

This makes so much sense for marrying the CMS AND PLN (but the question is, will the traditional institute of learning be expendable/replaceable under this model?):

Slide from

Featured Session: The Genius of "And": Reconciling the Enterprise and Personal Learning Network

Jon Mott, Asst. to the Academic VP - Academic Technology, Brigham Young University

#ties2009 Twitter @TIES Conference

Twitter / Dan McGuire: @ccaswell As of 3:10 PM C ... via kwout

While this year's TIES Conference had one of the most impressive, valuable, and thought provoking lineups of any conference I have attended in recent memory, perhaps the most interesting thing was not on stage or formally part of any particular session. For me the most interesting aspect of this conference was what was happening on Twitter. Many of us used Twitter this year to take notes and share resources related to sessions. This allowed six powerful things to occur that were not as effortless in the past. I thought it would be worth some time today to identify these six things and reflect on their impact.

Five Things Twitter Made Possible at #ties2009:

1. Networking
2. Sharing Resources
3. Reflective Practice
4. Amplification
5. Outside Influence
6. Extra Innings

Networking:

Networking is a huge reason people in any field attend a conference. It is important from time to time to convene with colleagues from other places to share ideas, gain contacts, and establish relationships. It can even be argued that in the information age this is the only meaningful reason to justify the cost of attend a conference. Before Twitter I would go to a conference and only establish meaningful relationships with a hand full of people and the majority of those people just became another card in my Rolodex. Following the #ties2009 Twitter stream people were able to find other people to connect with with similar affinities. When meeting these new people in person many times we had already been engaged in a conversation so the time from hand shake to meaningful dialog was greatly reduced. Twitter also provides an integrated ability to contact other people, so if you make the connection there you already have an instant connection to that person. Goodbye Rolodex, hello Twitter follow stream.

anderscj (anderscj) on Twitter via kwout

Sharing Resources

One of the most concrete applications of this tool is as a platform for sharing resources. During keynote speeches and sessions participants often shared links to related content online. This is essentially a Google Jockey technique applied to a backchannel. These resources could either be set aside for reference after the session or brought up to add value to session goers experience.

Twitter / Chad Caswell: For your convenience, a co ... via kwout

Twitter / dawnrnelson: #ties2009 Partnership for ... via kwout

Twitter / Mark Kingsbury: anybody use the MN Moodle ... via kwout

Twitter / Mark Kingsbury: thanks @uptonben for previ ... via kwout

Reflective Practice

Twitter facilitated many instances of reflective practice during and after sessions. It allowed attendees to re-contextualize ideas, pose questions to the group, and discuss topics.

Twitter / Mike Dronen: Lots to think about from y ... via kwout

Twitter / sschwister: Side note: #ties2009 tweet ... via kwout

Amplification

Each Twitter user has their followers, their followers have their own followers, and the web of relationships spreads out from there. Having our conversations on Twitter allowed the conference to be amplified beyond the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis to a global audience. Tweeted notes from the sessions reached people both in regionally and globally who could not attend in person. It undoubtedly brought awareness of the conference to a broader audience. The thoughts and content of the sessions reached a much larger audience and will likely have a greater impact than if the message were only heard by those in attendance.

Twitter / Jim Mesick: Enjoy reading the tweets f ... via kwout

Outside Influence

Tweeting notes from sessions allowed people not attending the conference to follow what was going on and what was being said in real time. Essentially this allowed conference Tweeters to become proxies or conduits for those not in attendance. These proxies could ask questions posed by the network. These outside voices also could also make attendees aware of additional or contradictory views other than those presented in the sessions.

Twitter / garystager: .@robinrenee "It's about t ... via kwout

Twitter / Jonathan Becker: @anderscj ask Marzano if h ... via kwout

Extra Innings

Because the #ties2009 hash tag will outlast the conference indefinitely the conference has the potential to live on indefinitely in this space. For as long the TIES Conference Twitter users are engaged in conference discussion the conference can live on. This has enormous power especially for teachers otherwise relatively isolated either by geography or by school culture. The conference lasts only four days (if you include the weekend workshops) but the conversations regarding the conference could go on forever.


Additionally, each conference session is only so long and often session-goers are left with questions for the presenter or each other that time does not permit. For those of us connected, Twitter allowed for those questions to be answered and the conversation to continue well past the hour set aside for the presenter's session.

Twitter Mentionmap - PLN Visualization Tool (#edchat #tristateplp)

Thanks to @gsiemens, I came across this fantastic Twitter visualization tool today. Mentionmap allows you to enter any Twitter username and it generates a relational map based on recent retweets. I have to admit it swallowed up too much of my day playing around with this. However, I consider it time well spent since I was able to connect with many brilliant people I never knew existed. New brilliant tweeple: I look forward to value your nodes will add to my PLN.


Click on image to enlarge

P.S. I am going to start playing around with how I title my blog posts. Since these get pushed to Twitter adding a #tag to the title will hopefully ensure that this post is shared with #tag communities.

Digitally Connected PBL Charter School Within Multiple Schools Update

For most of the year I have been blogging about an idea for how small traditional independent school districts might weather the storm faced by disruptive innovation in education. If you have been following my blog you will have seen this idea grow into the presentation I posted a couple weeks ago outlining how schools could embrace disruption by allowing it to happen within their walls but on a very small scale. The idea basically is to take the ITV arrangement many small and rural schools have and use that structure to facilitate the creation of a partially virtual, high-tech, project-based, teacher run charter school that rents classroom space from local traditional schools. In this model the charter school and the traditional schools would form a symbiotic relationship where both working together would be able to offer high quality and diverse learning environments that neither would be able to offer on their own. The hope is that these two models working together would make public education attractive to more students and their families.

Well, the idea looks like it might be getting its wings. I have the green light to explore the idea seriously from the three local school districts. Now, this green light by no guarantees that this school will open by my target of 2010 but it does offer the opportunity to put some serious exploratory effort into it. I want to make clear to everyone that by no means will we submit our charter application this July unless we are relatively certain that this idea will improve our schools for all stakeholders.

We want to involve as many people as possible in this process. To do so I have set up a Ning. I invite anyone with an interest in progressive education, charter schools, project-based learning, education technology, alternative pedagogy, networked learning, or Minnesota schools to join this Ning and help us shape this charter. All feedback and contribution is needed and welcome.


Visit WETC Charter School Planners