Nicole Finds a Niche, and Student Edubloggers Update

Comments from friendly supporters encouraged me to be patient, to be realistic, to not give up on the “Visionary Student Blogging” / Connective Writing senior project. All good advice that I needed to hear and remember.

Then I checked my Bloglines for new posts from my seniors. I found this from Nicole:

. . . . Shim, a fellow “learner” at my school, wrote this post with a question that really made me think: Students or Slaves? What are we really: are we really the slaves that are imprisoned – or more like an indentured servant – forced to serve 13 years in school – continually being forced to pour information in our brains in hopes of reaching the “promised land of an Ivy League college” in the end? Is the dream college our only goal? I think that people are mistaken of the fact that dream colleges don’t necessarily take the place of their dream. Especially, when those people think that by getting in to the dream college, they will be successful. (Believe me, I thought so too.)

As a student myself, I never knew what is was like to think outside to box, an idea that probably was strongly prohibited from schools. For the 17 years that I’ve “served” at school, I never realized that today I would be looking at my past experiences at school as something that could have been better.

Authority is something that we all want and have, its the same in school, depending on the authority that you have it is up to up in which you get to choose in which others do or even think. This is what schools have done, they have closed our minds of thinking openly and out loud. Schools have basically made us, the “students” into machines that only think in the way in which we are asked to think. Schools have made our paths, rather than letting us set our future, and they have given us only one choice, but to try and enjoy the schooly path that they have set for us.

What I found interesting about Shim’s blog post was the fact that he thought we were never told to “think outside the box.” In fact, I think we were always told to think outside the box – the only thing was, no one ever let us. In other words, we are told to be brilliantly creative, yet when we attempt to open our little boxes of constipation, the teacher instantly shushes us and closes the door. . . .

I share this for a few reasons: I love the writing, the connectivism at least with a classmate, the extension of conversation, the block-quoting instead of mere linking, the balanced critical thinking (evident more when you read her whole post). I love the look of Nicole’s blog and posts. I love the selection and placement of images, all legal to use from Creative Commons search. I love the embedded links, instead of ugly URLs pasted into her text. I love the careful proof-reading, the care in general. (Many of her peers are still not even checking their spelling, clarity, grammar, before publishing.) I love, in sum, how Nicole has shown that it’s not hard to learn the conventions of this new genre.

And I love simply seeing a writer in Nicole that I can’t possibly see in her homework “writing” (an oxymoron). I love her voice.

Above all, I love getting the student’s point of view on the state of education and schooling. Nicole shows precisely the type of good judgment I’m aiming for with the soon-to-be-launched “LearnerTalk” blog (that name might change): critical of education, while at the same time fair-minded, mature, not slanderous or malicious. We educators could find much to reflect on from posts like these, much to reform our own practice.

I’ve invited Nicole to be a contributor on that collective student edublog. Feel free to visit her blog, “Party Time – Turn Up the Poetry,” to give her input on her ideas, your suggestions for future posts, whatever. (You can always find Nicole’s blog in my sidebar blogroll under “Student Bloggers.” I’ve made her public, while all but a couple others from my school are still private and un-viewable to the public.)

An Update on the Student Edublog:

There will be a Skype meeting tonight to lay the foundations for the launch. So far Nicole in Korea, Sean in Scotland, Kevin Walter in Chicago, Arthus in Vermont, Anthony Chivetta in Missouri, Stacy in California, Dillon Decicio in Washington state, and Lindsea in Hawaii are lined up to contribute. (We’re awaiting answers from others.)

True to his months-old offer to support this elevation of student voices “however [he] can,” Dr. Scott McLeod of Dangerously Irrelevant and LeaderTalk plans, despite being at a conference, to skype in with some advice from his own experience launching LeaderTalk.

If you know any students in your region who deserve a place in this roster – and New Zealand, Australia, Shanghai, and other international schools, I’m hoping you’ll come through particularly – then please have them go to this planning wiki to sign up. Even if they can’t make the talk tonight, they can still catch up and join later.

I’m really looking forward to this. The time is ripe. (And just think how useful these writers will be as models for all the later adopters we’re trying to bring in to this new genre!)

1. Update on “Visionary Student Blogging” Project
2. Student Staff Writers Wanted: Student Edublog Seeking More Contributors
3. Add Your Classes and Favorite Tools to the Wiki (update)
4. Give Tuna a Subscribe: She’s a Natural Student Blogger

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