Edupunk as Portal

I continue to be a bit uncomfortable about the term EduPunk — for reasons similar to those posted by Doug Belshaw in Are you ‘Edupun’? I’m not.  How ever the idea of DIY teaching practices, tool arrangements, and scenarios intrigues me, as it explains pretty siccinctly a lot of what I talk about today and a lot of my own teaching style, ever since I started learning BASIC (and probably when I started dressing up as Socrates and Martin Luther, to be interviewed by my students).

If, when you scanned down to this blog title in your aggregator, you thought of web portals, then you probably scratched your head and thought, where’s Warlick going with this.  What’s got me excited this morning (anticipating another day of moving furniture) is all of the new educator bloggers I have learned about and then branching ideas I’ve been exposed to as I have tried to track through the conversations about Edupunk.  It’s become a portal to new stuff that I’m still trying to unbundle and figure out how to embed into my own conversations.

The problem with this?  My aggregator just got bigger, and rivets are popping out in all directions.

8 thoughts on “Edupunk as Portal”

  1. David,

    Edupunk is simply the latest meme. What you said about your aggregator getting fuller happens to me every time one of these goes round the Internet. It’s why I have to clear my feed reader and start from scratch every few months these days…

  2. I can’t help but think there is a more flattering term available for a creative, inventive, passionate educator. Even if a teacher is anti-establishment, he/she would count as allies most of active members of the online teacher community who seem to understand the need for adapting the profession…

    Even so, I do appreciate the speed with which an idea can gain leverage in the edu-blogosphere when a new phrase is popularized by a few admired bloggers.

    Wondering why the ‘outed’ edupunks all seem to be male? Now I’m wondering why I even bothered to notice…

    Can you undo this Stephen or David?

  3. I don’t care if people are uncomfortable with the term. It’s not about the term. Nor is it something you have to join or not, nor is it likely to be the source of a new Ning, diigo or newsgroup. It’s not about belonging or not belonging, being male or not being male, or any of the other usual things associated with a club or a movement.

    If you like the idea, you can riff on it. If you don’t like the idea, you can still riff on it. It you think it’s stupid, you can do something else with your time. It’s all the same with me, and I won’t think better or worse of anyone as a result.

    It’s a part of the blogosphere, playing.

    1. The term is important, Stephen, because it associates with people’s images of themselves and what they do — and, as you know, the frames of reference for the teacher community today is pretty broad.

      But I agree with you 100% that it isn’t a group, or a club, or a (and I chuckled about this) NING, or Diigo. Its about teachers being teachers, inventively and skillfully using the tools and techniques at their disposal to create and craft valuable learning experiences.

      I think that EduPunk is a good term, because it gets people attention. But the phrase that best describes what I’m seeing in this conversation is the “do it yourself” part of teaching (and learning) as a counter to doing with what they give you…

      Thanks for helping to amplify and clarify this conversation…

  4. So, if I am anti-establishment and espoused viewpoints about environment, commerce, government, school mandated technology systems, etc. am I edupunk? People have rolled their eyes at my viewpoints. I am a rebel.

    Maybe I am missing something. Do I have the term correct (haven’t been following it well)? And why label? Is there a gain by saying there is an “us” and a “them”?

    1. I don’t think so, Louise. It seem to me to be more about the learning experiences that happen in your classroom. If you teach directly from the textbook, using pacing guides developed by corp education and mandated by the state, or plug into Blackboard in a way that makes your course look like every other course, then you’re not Edupunk.

      However, if you are using tools and resources at hand, mixing and remixing, shaping and reshaping learning experiences tailor-made for your learners and your teaching style, then you are closer to Edupunk.

      Anyone else have a different take on this?

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