Beyond School

School writing: Assignments by teachers who don’t want to read them, to students who don’t want to write them; a perpetual and unnecessary misery upon which hinges the student’s future, and the teacher’s present, livelihood.

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Thanks to Jeff Utecht and the students in my activity block for this little demonstration of what real learning can look like now. Jeff’s in Shanghai. I’m in Seoul. We’re both in Twitter and Skype, though, so distance doesn’t matter.  This kind of international travel is free. And no airport waiting.

Read the tweets, then watch the movie of Jeff’s visit. He taught me something I needed to know quickly. And it was easy and fun. But don’t forget: he taught me. It was real-world learning, “Natural Global Collaboration,” “Quick-in, Quick-Out Networked Learning“. Isn’t that what schools are supposed to teach students?

, I said.

, said Jeff.

So, we

for about 30 minutes.* He showed me the plugin I needed to make my school’s WordPress MU student blogging portal as cool as his is at Shanghai American School. And we talked with students about starting a new school. (I loved the outburst, “I’ll go!” in chorus from several students.)

Then I said, ,

and Jeff said, .

And that’s how learning can look today. Fun, conversational, as-needed, and above all, as WANTED.

Sad epilogue: Most students don’t seem to get it. Even when I tell them that this type of activity can get them an A, they resist. They really seem educationally traumatized to not see or desire the type of fun power involved in all of this. But there are a few exceptions, thank Goodness. I’ll be featuring some of them soon (and that means you, Patrick, and Paul, and Won).

*You can download it here, but it’s unedited.

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I don’t want to analyze this stuff, when I can just link to it. I’ve blogged recently about the blog of Eeho, a student at my school with whom I’ve never spoken, and never had in a class. But I read him, and comment, and he comments back, and it’s real fun. It’s real, period.

We’ve discovered we share the same songwriter heroes (Bowie, Cohen, Cave, Waits) lately on this latest post on his blog.

And Lindsea from Students 2.0 has joined the conversation there too. (She’s everywhere these days, doing some incredible things to create student-led collaboration on a global, teacher-less scale.)

I said I won’t analyze, but I will go this far: We are engaged in discovering each other as people, sharing our passions and favorite things via Eeho’s blog. That means we’re writing, reading, learning from each other.

How this fits in traditional schooly norms of writing and reading and “learning,” how it can be assessed, and other such issues, I really can’t square with the natural, unsquare feel of it all.

But there’s a glimpse of a future in that post - and in the relationships forming in the comment thread - I hope to see more of in education.

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Just for fun: we’re at the wedding beautician, about to have our photos taken. I’ve never been into blow-dryers and make-up, and frankly feel like Liberace.

The sound on the Flixn embed is bad, but I just loved my fiancee’s reaction when I answered her question, “Who is this video for?”

[Update: here's a second, from the photo studio. Funny how in Korea, the groom sees the bride in the wedding array before the ceremony. (Did that culture note make this less fluffy?]

If my battery holds out, I may take the fluff further. Sorry for the serious out there. This sort of thing doesn’t happen every day. It’s kind of special. Marriage 2.0? (And stay tuned for the Ustream invitation. My parents in Alabama will be able to attend that way.)

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[Update: Correction about Chris: He's one of the few teachers that didn't need Skype training because he was already savvy that way.  He's also produced some of the best laptop learning in the biology class he teaches. I hate when I under-credit people by accident!]

I’m taking a personal day today for wedding photos. I didn’t write a lesson plan for my sub, because I didn’t need to. My sub, Chris Baier, learned Skype in a professional development workshop we did last semester. I just called him, had him hook his MacBook up to the LCD projector, and did a video-conference with my students. It looked like this:

Afterwards, I had one on one conferences with my students via Skype chat or, in one case where I needed to see the film editing monitor a student was using, another video-conference - he pointed the webcam to the monitor so I could help him troubleshoot, holding “my eyes in his hands” in a way sci-fi moment. It’s my networked learning class, so they’re all on Skype as a class group.

What are the take-aways from this? They’re countless: open school networks rock, subs with laptops and tech training rule, and I polluted less today by not driving to work - while still doing my work.

Just an interesting moment I thought I’d share. Never done that before.

And it suddenly occurs to me: ]I was part of my students’ “personal learning network” today instead of being their classroom teacher. Just a guy with a computer trying to help them learn.

I think I’ll skip school to teach from home more often.

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