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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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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Chris in Honolulu and I just finished a Skype conversation about improving the 1001 Flat World Tales flat classroom project for next year. We’re not finished with our talks, but one thing that came up, and warrants immediate public mention, is this:

Our student reflections were overwhelmingly positive (and helpfully constructive when not), so we do want to continue the project next year. And here’s the “big but”: we want to do it first semester. And we want to plan with all partnering teachers–including newcomers–for a couple of sessions before launching the project in ‘07-’08.

So consider this an invitation to any grade 9-12 (15-18 year-old) classrooms: my students in Seoul, Chris’ students in Honolulu, and Christina’s students in Kuwait are so far on the “in” list for next year. If you’d like to add your students to the list, joining Koreans, Kuwaitis, and Americans, leave a comment.

While not required, ideal candidates for next year’s workshop will be teachers who:

• are active edubloggers
• intend to assign individual student blogging in their classrooms
• able to commit to a weekly communication schedule with the project teaching team for approximately six weeks (two weeks pre-launch, four weeks during)

We’ve sketched out a rough “team planning” checklist to make next year’s road is smoother, so any newcomers will benefit from this.

If you need evidence that students will find this project engaging, here are excerpts* from the anonymous feedback my Korean students gave to this question: “What did you like best about this project?” I include every reply, so there’s no cherry-picking here. In their own words:

• I was able to learn their cultures just through their stories. I liked how I could.
• I especially liked about how we were able to define ourselves, using stories.
• We were able to have fun writing stories which we wanted to write.
• The project was kind of free in a way of writing a story of your own choice.
• What I liked best about this project is that many people around the world participated in the project.
• We got to interact with other people from different parts of the world.
• The thing that I like the best about this project was the opportunity to share ideas abroad.
• I realized that we have so many differences but we have as many similarities. I was honored and glad to view the world from a different perspective.
• We were actually able to connect with students our age in different countries. These types of projects that we’ve only been thinking about came possible in reality through this project–learning that just because we’re in different countries, that doesn’t mean we can’t do work together.
• We came to read and understand about the different writing style and culture of each other (Hawaii, Denver, and Seoul), and that we were able to interact and give feedback to their story. By doing so, we socialized and changed different opinions, which I thought was unique. It’s clearly different from projects that we do in school, because international projects allow students to interact with each other to learn things that they won’t from their fellow students at their own schools.
• Through this project I was able to learn about different cultures. Also I think I was able to provide information about my own culture to other students.
• I liked about peer works and editing processes online. Students from different regions of world got together online on internet and did project internationally. It was new and interesting to get to know each other.
• I honestly didn’t like writing this piece, but the best thing about the project I liked was that we got to know people from other countries. I could know how other people in the states wrote compared to me.
• I got to grow as a “writer” and push myself to use my creativity to write and revise my story.
• By helping each other—by having different cultures—helped me learn more. Sometimes, I didn’t know what I did bad in my writing and wanted to know how I should improve, but the only way that actually helped me improve my writing is the people from other countries that helped me learn more about my writing.
• I thought it was inventive and original. And it was good to see how other people wrote about their own cultures.
• Of course, I liked writing my own story and getting it read by people from all the world the best. It was my first time publishing my story on the internet, and I liked it.
• It made me think about writing more carefully and accurately. Also taught me the importance of editing my work and other people’s work.
• I could read various stories and it was interesting to read other students’ stories.
• I got peer help from them. Without this help my flat world story could’ve been much worse.
• The most impressive thing was to talk and reply to the foreign students. In the first semester, we had to exchange our stories or essays to one of our classmates. But then during this project, we were able to reply to the other school students, and whom we don’t know anything about.
• It was also a good idea to read the stories of students who were in different countries.
• I like how students all over the world are interacting with each other and how we can discuss things. It’s very interesting and cool at the same time. We can see how good everybody is at writing and what good writing looks like. American style writing and Korean style writing.
• My favorite part about this project was the fact that we, as writers can make up stories from our own head instead of reading a story someone else invented.
• What I like the best is that we were able to actually make up a story of our own because I thought we wouldn’t do such things like creating stories when we would come up to high school. I think it was a good experience to have. Also, by this “Peer Editing” things we did I think I was able to somehow improve my reading skills and how I should respond to another person’s story.
• The best thing I liked about this project was that we could contact other school students and read their stories. They were some great stories that I enjoyed reading. It was interesting to read students’ stories who lived in other part of the world.
• It feels good when you write good stories and others read yours and they know that you wrote the story. So it’s like if I tell you one story, then I’ll listen one story from other students. It is also like exchanging stories.
• Because we’re from different schools, and different countries, it’s exciting to hear what others have to say about your story.
• I was able to think back about the Korean culture and make story out of it. It was also interesting to see other people from the US, how they write and what they like. Most of all I enjoyed what people wrote and tasting their creativity.
• I liked the whole idea of this project because it was a certain way for us to connect to students in other countries, and realize how either far off we are behind or front we are then them
• I liked the fact that we were working with people living outside our country, the fact that we were working on a same project, with a same goal, communicating and supporting each other through internet.
• I just liked the fact that we are working on such a massive project with so many other students with diverse backgrounds.
• This project was the best at the point we can express our ideas in terms our cultures and share it with other students from around the world. It was also a good experience to see how others wrote their stories.
• I really liked how we were able to work with students our age all around the world for this writing assignment. Even though we didn’t get to meet the participating classes face to face, I feel we really got to know each other. We learned the other people’s hobbies, culture, and even their level of writing.

*a link to all Hawaii and Korea reflections to the same six questions is coming soon.

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Just a quick note to say that this blog has been preempted by end-of-year duties such as:

• assessing (and overseeing publication of) the 1001 Flat World Tales (more soon: student reflections from Hawaii and Seoul already done, and Denver hopefully soon to follow; after that, teacher reflections)
• assessing and polishing the Broken World wiki-textbook with my history class
• assessing and responding to the mountain of blog-posts in English and history
• prepping final exams and lessons

I imagine most teacher-bloggers have similarly pulled back from blogging in these final weeks.

And I imagine any of them who have been experimenting for the first time with integrating the read-write web in the classroom have, like me, a lot of sorting out going on in the silences.

After finals, I’ll be back with attempts to share my lessons learned. It’s been an interesting ride.

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Phuket sunset
Originally uploaded by rosswebsdale.

Nothing like an illness to clear your head. Mine taught me a lesson in balance. I’ve been so fascinated by the possibilities of our sci-fi educational reality that I’ve forgotten to take care of myself well.

It’s also a good time for silence in other ways. Things are slowing down, getting calmer. Thank Goodness.

Chris in Honolulu, Michele in Denver, and I are wrapping up our first 1001 Flat World Tales workshop (more on that when the student publishers choose the first stories for the “blook” in a few weeks).

The World War I to World War II online wiki textbook my history students are making is coming along nicely, and since they are lecturing for at least 75% of each class session, I’m more of a coach than a teacher (you can see their lectures on the wiki, since we filmed and embedded them–come back next month to see them try again with a second lecture, and we’ll see how this improves their presentation and speaking skills).

The endless 1:1 planning meetings with my admin are also winding down, and I’m waiting, with everyone else, to hear what the business department and owner finally decide. (Which gives me time to catch up on my grading.) Bless them for having the sense to include a teacher in these discussions.

The student blogging Grail still evades but still beckons. Let it. I can’t push the river.

And I’ve taken a break from my RSS subscriptions, from reading edublogs (at least reading so many), and from constantly holding my laptop to hold other things instead. Things like books, and EunJeong’s hand.

It’s nice to be reading again: Harvard historian of religion Elaine Pagel’s Adam, Eve, and the Serpent is a fascinating look at the culture wars between pre-Church Christians concerning sexuality, the body, and gender politics. It’s my second Pagels this year. During Chusok (the Korean Thanksgiving, Buddhist/Taoist style) I read her Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, along with ex-minister and New Testament Greek professor Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity?, and learned how much closer to Buddhism and other advanced viewpoints early Christianity was, before Roman Imperial politics put an end to all of that. So Adam, Eve, and the Serpent continues this jag for me. I’ve got Pagel’s The Origin of Satan, another historical study of early Christian thought and politics, waiting after that. It all fascinates me. I wish I knew more Christians–any, actually–who it fascinates as well. All the amazing discoveries we’ve made about Christian history due to the Nag Hammadi Texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other pre-Catholic writings burned by the victorious Roman Church, yet nobody reads them. (Or even bothers to consciously read their Bible, for that matter.) It’s a shame. “The Christianity that was, but is no more” is a Christianity far superior to the current brand, in my book. (DaVinci Code fans, there’s more history there than pop churches are comfortable to admit. Again: fascinating.)

But enough of unsolicited book recommendations.

I’m really just writing to say that I’m off to Thailand for a nine-day Spring Break. No computers, no students, no “Mr. B.” Just a guy with a backpack full of books and a snorkel, looking forward to reconnecting to more elemental things.

See you on the flip-side.

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