What wakes kids up? What would wake the community up?
Most people aren’t lazy. Yet by all appearances one might assume so.
Most people are craving work that matters. Work they know they can’t do by themselves.
YOUth ideas on how to go about doing what matters.
Notice the comments on how hard this is, how they need help. Kids are craving work that matters.
click to play
Noah sharing that for him, work that matters means he’s working with people. I get real lazy when it comes to independent work. This isn’t a classroom passion. I need to connect to someone who knows it a lot better than I do. I don’t know if I could do it by myself.
Work too hard to do by yourself?
Gus on something bigger than, something beyond. Hard work. It’s more than an opportunity, it’s a responsibility.
The exhaustion from overextending yourself creatively is some of the best exhaustion you will ever feel. An organization that provides a platform for people to push into their fear will produce both better work and a better workforce. - Seth Godin, Underextended
Work that is bigger than you, bigger than us?
What a boost to global net happiness it would be if we could positively activate the minds and bodies of hundreds of millions of people by offering them better hard work. -Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken
Community as a school: What if school’s setting were life, and kids were working on health, budget, environmental, etc, … problems?
school as life
From Edutopia: For college ready use PBL ..three factors that support the success of a young person: (1)A solid relationship with an adult mentor, such as a parent, priest, teacher, or coach; (2)A sense of mastery that develops (3)An internal sense of meaning and purpose
Perhaps better to say: For life Interdependency and beyond
ready use 1-1, PBL as we know it, …on steroids.
click to play
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click to play What if we all had a hunger to learn?
click to play
What if that was our only measure, are you hungry, do you know how to feed your hunger? That could change a room.
Community as a school: In the US, when you say real life people tend to define it as: outside of school. - Michael Wesch, K-State,
What if school involved everyone, the entire town? Wouldn’t we all be better off?
Health - people being known by people Budget – the more we know each other, the more we share Environmental – the more we share, the less we need
Sir Ken writes in The Element of Grange Primary of Long Eaton, England, creating Grangeton, with its own mayor, council, newspaper, etc and Dennis Littky,’s The Met - where the community is the school’s floor plan.
One of our biggest inspirations for the city as floorplan came from Lisa Gansky’s The Mesh. She encouraged us to look in unlikely spaces, that weren’t being used, to seek ways to share them for multi-use, so that we’re not needing more resources, as we simply become more resourceful.
directory
ie: average use-time of a power drill? 12 min so why do we all need one? no?
Lisa Gansky, the future ‌ is
sharing.
.
Our next big inspiration started with this conversation….
Our first week in the Lab, August 2010, the kids were skyping with James Bach. They were already deep into the issue of homelessness and wanted to know his insight on how to solve it. His answer set the stage for the rest of the year. James ‘ reply was that you can’t solve it by thinking you can manage people. Sustainable change begs choice.
He said the best you can do is provide the resources they would need to help themselves, let them know you care, and then rather than try to manage them, be available to them, along side them. While listening to the convo – Sugata Mitra kept ringing in my ears. His success – he provided the resources and left for 3 months at a time.
James suggested the city with resource buildings rather than schools‌. would move a community toward a healthier means to learning/living. *Our brilliant friend Adam Burk has helped clarify verbiage with his great insight in this matter. Community as school could change the systems that are persistently producing conditions for poverty to thrive.
Which we thought sounded great. And started to imagine how that could play out. How we could call that school..
The conversation gyrated back and forth, as did almost every other conversation throughout the year, between a specific situation (this time homelessness) and redefining school. After noticing the similarities of a literal homeless person and a figurative homeless student in a classroom, they jumped to how we could then help (provide resources, get out of the way, be available) to make the time we spend together during the day facilitate more self-directed, rich, passion led learning, without chaos taking over, through an interdependent status. play Aimee explaining NY’s interdependent status for teens
The crazy notion that each kid could essentially have their own self-made plan, allowed us to envision the entire community as one school. Visions from the previous year of the library being the hub of the school ….
… morphed into the idea of the highschool buildings becoming the hubs, or the resource centers, for the entire town. The town as one big school. Like a uni campus. Resources, lectures halls, science labs, art hall, click to hear original Lab description engineering hall, everything/everyone is available – per choice.
And our third big inspiration came from Dennis Littky..
He is doing something very similar at the Met in Providence RI.
He has been doing something very similar.
For the last 11 years. dang.
I recently just met with Isaac Graves, of the Patchwork School in Louiseville, CO. Patchwork is doing incredible things with younger kids.. As you’ll see, Patchwork is one of our prototypes in the floor plan. When I told Isaac about the kids’ ideas, he shared with me the story of Yaacov Hecht, and his Education Cities.
And I thought – whoa. My thinking went immediately to I Am Anne’s museum of herself – to make your own go to http://www.intel.com/museumofme/r/index.htm And George Siemens saying we need the glue to affect the research of all of these pockets of innovation. The glue is us, no? We just need to talk more, connect the dots.
And our forth big inspiration came from Kevin. He took us on a walk through Old Towne, teaching us how to find those unlikely spaces Lisa Gansky was talking about. He taught us how to notice more and how to change a room.
how can you change a room..
We kept thinking … about school as a business….
community as a school..
And then we starting walking through our town - imagining … how could this building come alive, how could that one be shared?
Throughout the year, we dreamed of such spaces, ones that would capture the fluidity of the web: 24/7, ubiquitous, something for everyone, malleable, continually morphing to suit the needs of whoever is in it. Our first glimpse of this morphism was Palomar 5 (in 3 weeks). Their white walled castle with the freedom to build and change and create, tickled our fancy. As did the passion driven adventures that resulted from their 6 month stay. Kosta Grammatis and @ahumanright.org in particular. Now at the end of they year, we’re certain morph and malleable are key adjectives.
Austin on private space
Lucas sketching space
Clay on balance in space
Thinking on space (physical, emotional, mental) ..
whiteboard walls
deep practice via Daniel Coyle
sound proof rooms, space/tools to skype separate detox room
dreaming boldly of spaces that already exist –Lisa Gansky
visualizing detox
We walked Old Towne with Kevin. We walked 4th Street. We talked about Lisa Gansky’s Mesh mentality, how we could do more with less. How we could create new purpose for old spaces.
Lyndsay’s post as confirmation. One answer to the question about the purposes and values of education is that it should enable young people to learn to participate in public spaces in which they work with other students and teachers to negotiate and collectively determine the direction of their own institution and learning.
The act of appropriating unused buildings to provide public spaces for free education is a provocation to think about what a "really free" education could be.
Lyndsay Grant on Hacking Higher Education - Really Free School
[if you don’t read the post.. they are doing this in London – offering free school in vacant spaces]
Doing what has been considered standard doesn’t equate with success anymore.
We need to be freeing kids up to be themselves. Giving them space to fail. Showing them we trust learning. That it is that fascinating and alluring.
Lucas with a CSU student talking about space and permission to be.
Then we heard about
getting hired as a director of the MIT Media Lab. His story is inspiring, to say the least, and his vision turned up the volume.
Could we make this a place that would accept me, and more importantly, be able to keep people like me? On the West Coast, you’ve got Peter Thiel, paying people to drop out of college. And I thought: let’s flip this around. Aren’t there a bunch of those people who dropped out who should be here at the Media Lab and how can we figure that out? That’s one of my missions.
click here for entire interview
Lab goal: building/supporting spaces for all options (all people) within public ed. [homeschoolers/unschoolers, dropouts, rebels, 4.0’s, homeless -any that are disengaged.] When we exclude, we miss incredible adjacent possibilities. Nothing is for everyone. Let’s use that for good.
Similarities in with what Joi writes and what we’re doing/thinking in the Lab:
If we could figure out a way to be long term and agile and figure out an investment structure for that, that is something Media Lab would be very good at: something where we could have a long trajectory, yet create a short term impact. [Connected Adjacency – per Saul – our original doc]
For me international is not about building a humongous center in some place, it’s how can I make everyone in the Media Lab be able to test their product in Kenya, and make that as easy as walking across the street to the Harvard Medical Center.
[The vision is not a Lab. The vision is a live community of choice. People in need of detox or freed space to explore crazy ideas, can filter through the Lab. But the center is the community.]
click here for entire interview
Similarities in with what Joi writes and what we’re doing/thinking in the Lab:
Everyone’s struggling with how you put the money together in a way that creates maximum impact.
[The Mesh – the future of business is sharing. We don’t need more resources, we just need to be more resourceful.]
What I’d like to do is bring people with me, and bring people back. [Virtual convo that feels like you just met for coffee – Junto ?]
Once you start going to places you see that face-to-face is really important. …..showing up everywhere. [Town as campus, kids out in community doing real work, face to face.]
It’s all about diversity -- geographic, sector, and field diversity.
[Fractal thinking, what similarities/diff do we have when we zoom out. Ellen Langer – prejudice decreases when discrimination increases – what is normal?]
click here for entire interview
Lucas wrote a brilliant paper.
Instead of embracing the diversity of the human mind we have stigmatized the very differences that are so characteristic of humans.
The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) declared war on the introverts, and the educationally challenged among others and has attempted to
define what a normal human should be, an extroverted individual who works well with people, progresses well in conventional schooling, and will succeed in a conventional job. Lucas, student, Stigmatizing the Human Mind
looking to measure creativity.
Now we figure we know to much (and too little) to fold. Moving forward in perpetual beta towards‌
So what exactly are we facilitating? What matters most – to an individual/community 20 characteristics of and from unschoolers
And how do we facilitate that?
Redefining NCLB – to create an ideal family situation for each student. Declaration of Interdependence (1-1), and beyond
ridiculous match up?
Is this 1-1 idea a Dennis Littky ran into that question when they started The Met , in Providence, RI. Finding that Providence had over 500000 adult works and 40000 hs students helped ease the doubt.
beyond
1-to-1
more ridiculous match up
Imagine who’s together in a room being per choice. [Rheingold/Shareski interview] Uni’s have used ratemyprofessors for years, because many professors are hired to do research, not to teach. So some sought protection from paying for a class with a professor who is not really interested in teaching. Imagine if we used this type of match up for good. This would give teachers/professors insight on what’s working, what kids are a good match for them. This would give kids insight into what teachers/styles would be best for them. And these decisions would be being made with their mentor(s) – not just a whim. From our research, for every kid that likes/dislikes a teacher or a style, there is typically a match for the opposite opinion. And beyond.
Let’s bring people together per choice.
What if most of what we do on a daily basis, is actually getting in the way?
What if we took more time to know someone? What if the best medicine is to be known by someone?
notice
Ellen Langer, along with others I’m sure, has done extensive research on mindfulness, and how it plays out in every area of our lives. The simple act of noticing could change the room, the world, ‌ even you.
A new paradigm shift. The future of business is sharing. The Mesh, Lisa Gansky
Getting to the heart of the matter begs a ‌
to deck for culture of trust
YOUth ideas on healthy spaces..
click to play
notice
The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.
notice
- Brian Sutton-Smith, leading Psychologist of Play
Why community? Why connected adjacency?
There are more resources in an institutional setting.. people and things. Let’s focus on that. What if we provide resources.. and let people design their own school?
So how do they learn?.. what do they need?
click to play Common statements in the Lab, I can’t stop learning, I want to learn everything.
When teenage girls can help organize events that unnerve national governments, without needing professional organization or organizers to get the ball rolling, we are in new territory. As Mimi Ito describes the protesters,
Their participation in the protests was grounded less in the concrete conditions of their everyday lives, and more in their solidarity with a shared media fandom‌
Although so much of what kids are doing online may look trivial and frivolous, what they are doing is building the capacity to connect, to communicate, and ultimately, to mobilize.
.. What’s distinctive about this historical moment and today’s rising generation is not only a distinct form of media expression, but how this expression is tied to social action. - via Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus
Amazing things coming out of what seems to be trivial… frivolous.
parent voice
Watching Daniel Coyle, learning about deep pratice.
Lab updates: 13 year old teaching game design, 10 year old programming this your school design it, kids getting reg credit some teachers saying they did more than expected, finding ways to secure a teen shelter, public awareness to trafficking, robotic worlds, video editing, music comp.. etc
Nothing new.. La de da. People are amazing if given space to be. Many of you are doing remarkable things. Let’s save some money/time/stress/spirit /etc and just call that school.
Note: We’ve learned just as much/more from those who didn’t experience expected outcomes in the Lab. We know what doesn’t work and why. That helps us discriminate what does work. It added stress to them though –Noble Prize awaits.
Jane McGonigal writes, in Reality is Broken, of a future Noble prize where unlikely people are rewarded for hard work, work that matters.
What our failures produced this year 2010-2011:
1) 2) 3) 4)
The Lab vision (Lab site – request from parents, updates/etc ) CONNECTed – district vision Options – empowering choice a bold dream – history & floorplan
We gained a clearer vision: nothing is for everyone. choice empowers. your school/life design it. facilitation per 1-1 mentors. alongside, and beyond be you. share back: ie wikipedia, expositories, portfolio (behance), video log We hope to gain further progress with these: tag Youtube (& video response) for video logging work on Junto-ish space to talk Jim and Sasha - working on virtual reality in Drupal. ie: collegeincolorado - but instead of reading - they would become ie: a chiropractor, scientist, etc. We got asked to post 10 times over the next year on dmlcentral (Mimi Ito, danah boyd, Ethan Zuckerman, Howard Rheingold, Cathy Davidson, Jeff Brazil, …) They have plans for 30 more youmedia ‘s at least 1 more quest2 learn 2 page paper from 2008 (50 mill project) digital youth project
TSD Nothing is for everyone. Let’s facilitate that. CONNECTed
Dennis Littky, the city is our floorplan.
On waking up the community..
We talked to community members, as potential mentors. Would they be willing? Would they be interested?
We talked to the Mayor about what we could do. He gave us hard work. Work he can’t do alone.
(Barry video) We talked to city people, about planning together, legalizing street art, occupying space, sharing stories, bringing people together.
(Felicia and/or Marcie video)
Aimee & Noah on teen Aimee sharing their shelter & homelessness. current thinking for See Michelle’s human a teen shelter. trafficking event -slide 100. Working on this dream: tunnel jam And this one to share stories : street art
Dear Admin, Realizing your hands are tied on many things.. We (the Lab) can work both in and out of the system. Let us do/support/facilitate things you can’t. literacy standards who mandates this? math state standards to courses and this?
Working on easier ways to credential work outside the course book.
Austin & Jenny Luca, speaking at Edubloggercon
Gus w/our superintendent
Check out wikicities via Yaacov. Sam w/board member
The beauty of becoming yourself, making yourself, noticing more and being more mindful, is that it empowers you to let go of yourself. You start working for that something bigger than… … that something beyond. You start needing others. You start knowing others. You find yourself dreaming. Dreaming boldly. So now, in sketching such spaces of collaboration, we’re using YOUmedia as an existing visual.
Dream boldly with us. Let’s start today. What’s next… is now.
A visual of physical space … A project of dmlcentral.com
YOUmedia – click to play
Do take a quick peek at this video. The visual will help you follow the thinking in the next several slides. As we share this idea of a floor plan.
So here’s a rough sketch of the floor plan…
and some ra
w thinking
aloud..
Community as one school.. The Lab - community center/hub for perpetual freshness - a prototype to launch the idea of highschool buildings becoming youmedia-type resource centers. Also hatchery for the makings of future city Art Hall and Engineering Hall.
key
Over the next year…
the Lab: Imagination & Play Pre K-5: vast exposure through games, logic, programming, … dabbling with mentors other than parents
9-12 – quasi college – Design/prototypes:
6-8 focus: ongoing exposure, solidifying mentors, working on small personal network
12+ - quasi career Design/prototypes:
Design/prototypes: i&p , be you web, and Patchwork
the Met, detox, and your school design it, , Yaacov Hecht, Education Cities
Create a space to house our best resources for the arts.
Create a space to house our best resources for engineering.
Cathy Davidson, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke, Yaacov Hecht , The Educational-Social Entrepreneuring Incubator
Teachers – google 20% as learners, Teacherpreneurs, Yaacov’s incubator, & Your pd design it
Currently imagining the Lab could roam around the city in diff spaces creating mesh. Rented to them at low cost or free of charge. In return, their time in it is spent designing the space for creativity/allure, one that is alive, a future investment for the owner(s).
Lisa Gansky's The Mesh - sharing spaces, finding unlikely spaces to use/share Artspace is coming to Loveland, they renovate buildings in order to create, in essence - homeless shelters for artists
ra w t h inking
al o u d ..
This building - is within the range of the location artspace is looking at to renovate [ie: the cathedral ceiling in the building now blocked with a fake lower ceiling, etc could be exposed] Envisioning this building as a first youmedia-type, community center-type space for our town, a prototype of what we think each of the highschool buildings will be within the next 3 years (part of the kids 4 yr plan) Envisioning the process of changing just this one building. Very mesh-like, ie: could be owned by several interested parties in town or by just one.. renting to us in a sense for free - knowing that at the end of the year - the Lab - could move on to another empty building, owned by the same person(s) or others, and repeat. So in essence, kids moving into these different spaces they have already scoped out.. doing their work in them.. but as they work.. creating the space so that they owner's value increases, the space becomes alive. (ie: Lyndsay's post referencing the Really Free Schools in London)
A bit on youmedia -type resource centers and why we think Loveland could model the means to this disruption happening anywhere. Pearson – and/or other book companies.. are no longer trash talked for soaking up all ed's money - for the purpose of something we no longer believe in (standardized tests, etc), they act out a new purpose
(which Pearson obviously already realizes.. not sure if others do - as seen in hmh's recent challenge - where if you win you can't implement your ideas for 9 months while your in a sense negotiating with hmh as a first partner - don't know - i do hope i'm wrong there)
Macarthur Foundation – and/or other foundations … perhaps Google, local people/organizations – have a small scale prototype to test out theory without waiting for policy to catch up. Theory is great - but actually doing is where you find the failures that bring you authentic perpetual beta and hence - perpetual success.
. . d u o l a g n i k raw thin
People can't imagine that towns could be filled with youmedia-type centers when we're experiencing such economic dire. But when you look into it, that's hooey. We have enough resources for that and more, they are just currently being thrown into old wine skins. Right now in ed.. perhaps the biggest compromise to change is thinking we can tweak ourselves away from standards and all the policy that revolves around that. A culture of trust won't come from a gradual backwards release.. at least not in our lifetime. This is a shift rather than a tweak, meant to awaken indispensable people today.
This is a rough sketch of the buildings in our town, the colored ones part of our vision... over the next year.
What we envision next year:
Fine tuning a means to monitor growth: Expository, portfolio, wikipedia edit Over 500 videos – tagging/sharing this summer, documentary More focus on logging (video as well), writing locally & for dmlcentral
click for Adam’s 1st video log
Community involvement: Best asset right now – word of mouth trumps money Community gatherings – films at feed and grain this summer [I am, Schooling the World] Artspace & ACE (robotics - dog as open source for programming, Rushkoff – program or be programmed, legal street art, JR – maybe of 1-1’s)
Focus: 1-1 mentors (and beyond) Inform the community on ed options – nothing is for everyone Log/share/map activity/thinking in the Lab Online as open source Visit: Met – BIF 7 - Gansky, boyd, Pink, Littky, Haque, Hagel, Visit: Patchwork, TED: Collins June 29?
Space – Downtown spaces – June about Artspace – Grace church? – ACE – robotics Stapleton Farm Liability School during the day – united way after Transportation Bus routes city and school City – zipbike program
mo
w a r re
n i k thin
.. d u o l a g
Funds: Looking into United Way, local support, major companies with like vision, businesses offering 10% time to employees to mentor, savings from paperless, less policy, etc, donation, Resources What we currently are using: macbooks, flips, furniture from warehouse Future: access to warehouse, access to recycleds – community/district donating laptops/phones/bikes they no longer use
key
Over the next 3 years‌
Resource spaces, similar to Patchwork, with meeting times, etc To facilitate space for your school design it, housed in current elementary and middle school buildings
Resource spaces, similar to YOUmedia, with meeting spaces, etc To facilitate space for your school design it, housed in current high school buildings
described earlier..
Existing buildings morph into resource centers, meeting spaces, with specialty buildings shared by the community..
over the next 3 years.
remember…
Facilitated per 1-1 mentors and rateyourprofessors.com type matching. Our vision last year for world school – beyond face to face Pre-k through 8th – exposure - design via i&p , be you web, and Patchwork 9-12 – quasi college – design via the Met, your school design it 12+ - quasi career - design via John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke
Over the next 3 years…
Pre-k through 8th – exposure - design via i&p , be you web, and Patchwork 9-12 – quasi college – design via the Met, your school design it 12+ - quasi career - design via John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke By our 4th year… 2010-2011 having been year one…
Crazy?...
click to see floorplan in video form.. voice over slides - first glimpse at be you commons
Kids have connections down. Many of us just don’t see it as legit. Many of them don’t see it as legit. Connections are legit. How kids connect and collaborate is huge to social change. Adults still hold the keys to dreaming. Whether it’s a pause, a look, a refocus,.. we communicate an assumed agenda. Perhaps, what we need to do is give kids more space, legit space, to do their thing. Their thing is pretty amazing, if it’s their thing. We can’t give them space, tell them we want them to do their thing, and then tell them how that should look. We won’t be blown away by their brilliance if we continue to manage it. If we would all give ourselves permission to notice more, we wouldn’t be able to not do more. We’re doing less because we’re hung up on what’s an allowable dream.
We need to focus on finding/creating/supporting free spaces for our YOUth. This could be a joint venture, like no other. This is a huge multi-player game. Too important to not take all of us. *YOUth – you to whatever degree you decide.
via The Lab in Loveland, CO because of the space, permission and trust given to us by Thompson School District
SPACE to experiment on the edge. Connected adjacency with the district.
docboard for this slideshare ideas from year
It’ s a family affair. When matters to them, it matters to me.
Sharing talents because we’re connected.
Parent on google Teachers in the classroom Parents making connections Amazing what this catching the allure. , strewing open environment has The goal of the lab more produced. A 10 year is to see what curiosity, as old that I need a happens in a free they follow dictionary to talk to. space in order to their kids’ I’m currently encourage others fancy. borrowing his 2 inch (teachers/students/ thick html code book, admin) to bring he read 2 years ago. more of that A 6 year old that just freedom into their the other day had 140 already existent views on her latest spaces. Tom is one dog story. in particular, fully 1-1 provides every kid embracing Erica with this. Suggestion for Lab McWilliams: Per danah boyd, the be usefully ignorant best filter is a human . one.
It’s more about a mindset than anything… High recommends for this slideshare’s ideas: Lisa Gansky, The Mesh
(how to find resources in unlikely places)
Yaacov Hecht, Democratic Education
(stories of success/failure that are us, as we offer space for kids to find their gift/own their learning, education cities, embrace perpetual unknowing)
Dennis Littky’s, The Big Picture, Ed is Everyone’s Business (modeling the 1-1 mentor, the transcript/expository/portfolio at end of yr, city as floorplan)
Clark Aldrich’s, Unschooling Rules, (rethinking school means not thinking school)
So many others.. Reality is Broken, The Element, DIY U, Rework, Linchpin, Talent Code, Mindset, Cognitive Surplus, Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar, The Power of Pull, A New Culture of Learning, The Design of Business, The War of Art, Do the Work, What Technology Wants, Tribes, Blogs Wikis Podcasts, The New Brain, The Human Project, The Blue Sweater, Drive, Greater Than Yourself, Wounded by School, Teaching Unmasked, ….
previously slides are one story deck of the narrative deck:
The entire narrative deck can be accessed here.. Or you can go to the next slide to access another story deck‌
as story
just out: awakening indispensable people via videos warning – poor quality – ie slidedeck with voice