Will Richardson posted a wisdom seeking article today on weblogg-ed called, It’s Not Just the “Read/Write” Web. He says…
I listened to a presentation of late that attempted to define School 2.0 and did so pretty much solely on the grounds that we can have our students create and publish meaningful work to the world. Now I have absolutely no problem with infusing these tools into classrooms to allow kids to publish what they know to large audiences. That’s a great first step. But that’s not School 2.0 (is it?) And in another conversation I had recently with someone who is doing some really interesting implementations of social technologies into her district, the main success was that her teachers and students were now able to communicate more effectively with each other and parents. That’s not it either (is it?)
Go to the post page to partake of the conversation that this article has provoked. But since I wrote my comment, on my phone, in the airport, I wanted to flesh it out just a bit here. Actually I think I did a pretty good job at the airport.
What I seem to read in in his examples was an insistence among educators — traditional and progressive — to work toward final products. Instead of a book report or a graph in colored pencil, it’s a video or a podcast. In RL, so much of what we do never really gets finished. For that mater, what do we ever start from scratch. It’s all ongoing. It’s all conversation.
One of the insights that I’ve gotten from my own children is that they view information as a raw material, something that something else can be done with. Mashups are the most obvious example. I would rather not look at the production of a video or a podcast as the end of an assignment, but as the beginning or continuation of a conversation.
We are so focused, as educators, with what is learned. I wish we were more focused on learning. That’s sort’a what I’m thinking about school 2.0, while waitin for my connetion at O’Hare….
..and it’s what I continue to think after a day at the Games • Learning • Society conference.
David,
One of the great teachable moments when working with children, and particularly in adult workshops, is when a participant says to me, “I’m done.”
At that point I often fake outrage and reply, “Done? What’s done?” Sometimes I rattle off a list of other things they might consider doing to improve upon what they did or to occupy their remaining time more productively than proclaiming their “done-ness.” This however is a clear consequence of the short, quick, superficial and often inauthentic tasks that comprise curriculum. “Done-ness” results from a lack of personal autonomy and agency for learning being surrendered to the teacher.
This is the problem I have with the emphasis on information and the computer as an information appliance. People skim and look things up, but do they read multiple experts in depth? (like in books) They “make” music in Garageband, but do they compose music? They write blog entries, but how about novels?
Are mashups just creativity on the cheap? Are they more than the magazine photo collages I still see in K-12 classrooms the world over? Are mashups another manifestation of Jerry Seinfeld’s critique of American Idol – “I’m 16. Why aren’t I famous yet?”
Can you cite a mashup that may withstand the test of the time the way a Shakespearean sonnet, Mozart symphony or Charlie Parker solo do? From which intellectual, creative or cultural tradition do mashups evolve?
Is tradition, expertise, study and discipline being lost in these conversations? If so, then School 14.0 will be just like School 1.0 where what we do we do because it is easy and doesn’t require much time, passion or expertise?
David,
I am writing to you this evening to invite you to check out a professional development blog that the California School Library Association 2.0 Team is providing for free to school librarians.
School Library Learning 2.0 is providing summer 2.0 fun for teacher-librarians and their friends. Many librarians and teachers KNOW they need to jump in and actually create their own blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, and images. So… School Library Learning 2.0 gives them the “permission to have fun” over the summer, at home or at a local public library or Internet cafe, without school Internet filters and other restrictions. It focuses on web 2.0 curriculum connections.
When you get time, please check it out and let me know if you have questions. It is a powerful (but quiet) librarian program.
Best wishes.
– Jackie Siminitus,
CSLA 2.0 Team, project manager
CSLA2team@yahoo.com
http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com
David, I Think I’m getting School 2.0! But, as I’m sure you know, the concept is nothing new. Would you consider it a new take of “a life long learner”? The tricky thing about “REAL LEARNING” is that it seems to happen by accident and it so hard to predict. It is always great to see a student have a flash of inspiration and then run with it. That seems to be the goal of School 2.0 Maybe I’m way off.
Ben,
I agree with you. It’s one of the themes that I took from the EduBloggerCon, that nearly everything we were talking about was life long learning.
Gary,
I agree with the first part of your comment. I’m not very good a “outrage,” but I’ve done the same thing, asked folks to think about how they might do more, or ask them to consider each other’s work and consider how they might be improved, in terms of some overall goal.
As for the rest of your comment, I get it. However, I suspect that the whole networked, digital, ever-present infinitely scannable information environment is capable of being deep, rich, and broadly meaningful. I think its why what we are all doing is so danged important.
I always find your comments interesting, and I agree that learning is an ongoing conversation… but I’m not a fan of either/or: a learning as process and learning as product dichotomy. It is, of course, important to have both: conversations, sketchbooks and ideas in progress AND expectation and ability for completion.
Finished products at designated end points demonstrate those skills that are not demonstrated except through completion, including but not limited to ability to coalesce ideas for a goal, meet a deadline, complete an thought, choose a moment, acknowledge your best effort to date, create a product.
Yes there is an ongoing conversation, but for the artist who is always searching, there are always identifiable end points and new beginning points … A room full of half considered ideas is of no value.
There is something about pulling it all together that can not be approximated and something that is not learned if there’s never a pulling it all together moment. Why train them to believe that there are no end points, no products?
Children are not merely their own creations. They are also raised in the ways in which we would have them go. If we have ambiguous expectations, we lie to them. We lull them into a false sense of a world without boundaries, deadlines, consequences, products… They never need give their all in the moment because their work is always “in progress”, always available for further revision… even when their mistakes represent pure sloppiness and lack of effort.
Beginnings, middles and ends are important because each period of a project has learnings attached to them.
Making is intrinsically rewarding and it demands best efforts. It has been my experience that my students tend to give their best when there’s somewhere to go. Conversation is important too…. it can be rehearsal and investigation when it leads toward a goal, but it can merely be noodling where there is no goal.
Audrey,
You make some interesting points and I share your discomfort with David’s description of unfinished process being a conversation. The process of creation may just be fractal-like, you find “done-ness” at many magnifications of the doing.
However, some of the best work I’ve ever seen done by kids was when a teacher gave an unimaginatve assignment and due to the availability of great construction materials, like LogoWriter (of yore) or MicroWorlds EX, kids far exceeded the expectations of that assignment through their own creativity because they had a personal laptop and an intrinsic desire to make something better.
My doctoral research creating a high-tech multiage alternative learning environment, based on constructionism, with severely at-risk kids in a prison found that the best way to convey “what is a project?” was to define project as “something you want to share with others.” That simple goal of shareability, plus a supportive culture, abundant materials and sufficient time (all a student required) created a context in which great student invention was possible and learning resulted.
I wrote a huge response (grin–that will continue later) on my own blog, but I want to add to the discussion here. I do think this kind of teaching/learning can be planned, but it takes more time than most of us have. Along with a willingness to stand aside, quit teaching and let students LEARN. The problem is we have so much to “cover” that we don’t give students the necessary process time for real engagement to kick in. Thus, product becomes our means of measurement and assessment.
Jeri,
You’re absolutely correct. The most common advice I dispense in schools is “Less Us, More Them.”
The alternative learning environment Dr. Papert and I created in Maine allowed kids to work on their own projects for five hours every day.