Beyond School

[This post has taken me a few days to write. I apologize for its length, and hope you'll read it to the end.

When I started reading edublogs last December, Karl Fisch was my first. His Fischbowl frankly blew me away. I read it obsessively during my Winter Holiday vacation, started blogging my reactions to Karl's "best of 2006" selections on my first fumbling posts as an edublogger.

This was on the original Beyond School (which I now lovingly abbreviate), on LiveJournal.

Reflectively blogging on Karl's best, I felt ideas for classroom implementation bubble. They came to a boil before the holiday was over, and I returned for second semester ready to launch my first large-scale wiki project--the French Revolution Ant-Farm Diaries, a writing-to-learn history mini-wikipedia combined with historical fiction-writing in the form of diaries.

While this was a collaborative project, with another teacher and his learners, and while it did explode the classroom walls, it did so in a very limited way: the only wall that went down was the one between my own classroom, and Mr. Spivey's room next door.

My point so far? I didn't need the edublogging network to help this collaborative classroom project happen. I found Jason myself, which was easy. He was in the lunchroom. I pitched the project idea and he said "Okay, sure" with a mouthful of kimbab.

Still, even though this "flat classroom" project was literally as global (and flat) as the 100-odd square meters of our two adjacent rooms, the lesson was a hit for the students. They loved collaborating with all the ninth graders in the school, and not just the random group in their period. And their summative assessment--traditional analytical essays on the course of the French Revolution--demonstrated a very solid grasp of the content.

(Strangely enough, I think the writing was overall stronger for this than it was for the much more intensive 1001 Flat World Tales, but that's a topic for another day. I think it has to do with something Alan Watts points to with the Zen maxim, "When you try to float, you sink; when you try to sink, you float.")

While Jason and I were managing that project, I started blogging "teacher think-alouds" about how I could do a collaborative wiki project based on The Arabian Nights that extended beyond my hallway, beyond my school, and out into the "flat world." I'd discovered Julie Lindsay's and Vicki Davis' Flat Classroom Project (and it's relevant to my point, which I only manage to arrive at several paragraphs down, that both Vicki and Julie are also edtech specialists, not core-content teachers), and after seeing how the students took to the French Revolution collaborative writing, thought it would be incredible to do a global creative writing workshop on a wiki, using the 6 Traits of Effective Writing. A few "think-aloud" posts later, the idea for the 1001 Flat World Tales was firm enough to start hawking here on "B.S."

But this time--and this is my main point here--I did need help from the edublogosphere. I needed teachers in other countries to sign on. So I kept hawking, inviting, pleading, and hawking some more. And within a couple of weeks, edubloggers started helping out.

Jeff Whipple, an edtech specialist in Canada, and Jeff Utecht, an edtech specialist in China, plugged the project on their blogs. I believe Karl did too. NextGenTeachers were even nice enough to host a podcast about these projects. And while the attention was nice, I still had no classroom teachers to connect with.

Jeff Whipple then went beyond the moral support by persuading Chad, a middle school English teacher in his district, to throw his hat in the ring. Chad's students were a grade below mine, and he only had a handful, but it was a start.

Then Karl, responding to a few emails I'd sent, came through maybe a week later with a teacher in his school who was willing to play. And Michele, like me, taught ninth graders. Things were looking up.

Around the same time, Chris Watson in Hawaii signed on (I don't even remember how we hooked up--maybe I left an invitation on his blog, or he on mine?).

So within three weeks of floating the idea, Chris, Michele, and I started our students writing together. (We just finished, and we learned loads by doing--but that's a subject for a later post, since we're giving the "almost publishable" writers one last week to revise to meet our standards.)

Meanwhile, another edtech specialist in Malaysia, Kim Cofino, hooked up one of her teachers with Chad in Canada to start a middle school workshop; soon, a Serbian English teacher signed on too. I met her through ePals. (Since all workshops are self-contained, I don't know how this one fared. Stay tuned for a "lessons learned" on that one as soon as final exams are over.)

Also meanwhile, an elementary workshop got off the ground (but how high it flew, again, I don't yet know) between Terry Smith in the US and a teacher pulled in by edtech specialist Jeff Dungan in the Dominican Republic. Stayed tuned for reflections on that one too.

And finally, a second high school workshop between Shanghai, Serbia, and Australia began a month after our first Hawaii-Denver-Seoul one. A glimpse at that wiki a month or so ago tells me that the collaboration hit some considerable bumps. I can't wait to compare notes from all of these first attempts to find out what those bumps were, identify patterns, and isolate principles for smoother flat classroom collaboration in content-area classrooms next year. The mistakes, mis-steps, and brick walls all these English teachers experienced should provide a motherlode of lessons learned for all content-area teachers in the future. But again, that's summer homework.

Why I'm writing this now, though, is to point out how difficult it was to actually find content-area teachers to collaborate with. Many edtech specialists, as you've just read, took an interest and tried to help by plugging the concept on their blogs (and once the workshops got off the ground with the participating teachers on board, many more edubloggers started writing about their "discovery" of the project -- leading me to feel a bit like the Native Americans must have felt to learn that Columbus had "discovered" them), but very few were able to actually expand the project by bringing in participating classrooms.

And this, I suggest, is a huge challenge for getting "flat classroom" projects out of the salons and into the schools. All of the blogging about new edtech finds and possibilities is genuinely helpful and interesting, but until more teachers are connecting in the content area classrooms, it seems less vital than facilitating those connections.

It's fairly certain that the reason for this dearth of participating teachers is largely due to this unfortunate truth: most classroom teachers would sooner brave the gates of Hell than those of flat world collaboration. Try as they may, the evangelical edtech specialists surely find content-area teachers a hard lot to convert.

But there has to be a way we can improve this situation. And since (drumroll) I'll be joining the ranks of edtech specialists next year at my school (except for two sections of an AP Lit class I'll be teaching), I want to suggest this one: Let's make it a goal to find and connect teachers in our various schools between now and the beginning of the '07-'08 school year, and to help them set up and sustain collaborative projects. Patrick, Scott, Jeff, Jeff, Karl, Chris, Pat, Kim, and anybody else: what do you think? Do you have any content-area teachers right now who might be open to connecting with other teachers over the summer to explore starting the fall semester with some global collaboration? Here in Seoul, I've had one history teacher, four English teachers, and one drama teacher express interest. Our school will launch a 1:1 program next year (with Macs) to make such collaborations more easily manageable.

If we start talking now, we've got a good part of the summer to lay the groundwork for classroom 2.0 (or at least 1.5) in practice. I hope to hear from some of you. (And I guess I'll put this out on the Classroom 2.0 Ning as well.)

[Two afterthoughts:

1. Maybe there is such a network for such a purpose already. If I'm reinventing the wheel, please let me know so I can join that one instead, and promote it in a follow-up "never mind" post.

2. If you're a content-area teacher reading this, and you want to nominate yourself for inclusion in this network--Bing, Nate, I think you already have, yes?--then by all means, leave a comment or shoot me an email.]

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I’m catching up on comments that fell through the cracks a couple months back when I caught the bad end of some wicked mojo.

I’d asked in a post for help with resources for Digital Storytelling, and “Nate Stearns,” for whom I searched on Technorati to no avail, posted this very valuable comment. So I’m sharing. Here it is (and thanks, Nate–we should talk about a DS flat classroom project next year, but talk about it sooner).

Nate Stearns said…

Here’s what resources I used when I did my American Dream movie project. And, here are the results. If I had to do it over again, I would have been much more stringent about the storyboarding portion. Marco Torres came to talk to us and his ideas for teaching storyboarding and brainstorming would, I think, generate much better work.

Good luck with the project. I’m also trying to figure out how to pull off the “digital essay” ala Human Lobotomy. It’s a completely different medium and the rules take awhile to get down.

Oh, and here is one pretty awesome example of a student digital essay that I think could be a model for the whole enterprise.

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newteachergeekday

• Patrick Higgins‘ wiki for new teachers introduces:
  • Connective Writing
  • Social Bookmarking
  • Flat Classrooms
  • “Ten Essential Tools for Educators”
  • Resources

  A great professional develpment resource in the quest for classroom conversions.

   - post by cburell

Flixn.com | Video Everywhere

• Thanks to Patrick Higgins (who thanks Will Richardson) for this find:  this might be just the peer feedback tool we’re looking for for the 1001 Tales writing workshop.  It requires a webcam, but otherwise is dead easy to embed–easier than Yackpack, and video added to boot.  (And check out the film debut of Patrick’s Audrey, who can’t be more than four moons old, on his demo.  Priceless, Patrick.)

  I’m seeing this as a way for students to give peer feedback by reading their flat classroom peers’ works aloud into their webcam, pausing for commentary all the while.  At a couple stages in the Flat World Tales, we had students podcast themselves reading their own works, then listen and reflect about what they heard.  Otherwise, no audio-video was used; instead, students only wrote their feedback on each other’s wiki page.  My students said this took them upwards of a half hour per story feedback.

  So Flixn might be faster, easier, and more effective–and more social.  Some of the student feedback expressed regret that they could not see or hear their flat classroom partners this time around.

  I’m really liking this….Chris Watson, are you listening? 

   - post by cburell

Plotbot: Collaborative Screenwriting

• Very interesting.  Thanks to Jeff Wasserman for the tip.
   - post by cburell

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World Without Oil :: Document Your Life In The New Reality

• On online game meant to educate about the “habits of mind”–and action–needed to face the growing oil shortage as wisely as possible.
  - post by cburell

Center for Media and Democracy - Publishers of PR Watch

• A media watchdog group, keeping an eye (especially) on the growing incursion of political marketing techniques into journalism. - post by cburell

Geoscience Australia: Query Nuclear Explosions Database

• Database with the time and place of every nuclear bomb test, per country, since 1945. Wonder who exploded more, the USA or USSR? Here’s where you can compare.
  - post by cburell

toledoblade.com — Why did some troops target civilians but others did not?

• Vietnam vets discuss why they did or did not kill Vietnamese civilians in the war. Part of a powerful series of the Toledo Blade.
  - post by cburell

Mickey Mouse drops the racist “N-bomb” in a 1932 comic

Key Issues: Nuclear Weapons: History:

• Excellent site with streaming audio of Cuban Missile Crisis discussions during the “13 Days” at the White House.
  - post by cburell

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My last post failed to mention in its title that student reflections (only in response to the first of six questions) on the 1001 Flat World Tales flat classroom project were posted at the bottom. So now you know: they’re there. (Barbara, I’d promised this to you, and will post the rest–Hawaii’s and Seoul’s–within the next few days.)

More soon, including the website with the selected stories for publication on the “blook,” as well as the literal book publication through Lulu.com.

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