click to play another brilliant piece from Nic Askew
The interesting and fascinating thing of having no clue, is then you fall in love with the questions.. not questions to be answered, questions that are a guidance. The mystery is so huge‌
There are so many exemplars of innovation, no doubt. They are everywhere.
People are amazing if given space to be. Many are doing remarkable things.
Let’s save some money/time/stress/spirit /etc and just call that school.
Two great visuals from exemplars of what this paradigm shift entails, and affords to social change…
rather than just doing things really well, or even … much better than….
a physical visual of the shift:
New director of the MIT Media Lab
click here to read full article
New director of the MIT Media Lab
Ito holds no college degrees.
click here to read full article
I once asked a prof to explain a solution, “..just learn the formula so you get the right answer.� That was it for me. click here to read full article
http://kerismith.com/
click to hear Kathryn Schulz share her research
Richard Saul Wurman
embrace your stupidity ---read/seen that article? – uh huh.. we do that… how many kids do that….
prestige in knowing things... ironically blocks learning about things that matter
My whole life has been about connecting things that aren’t connected.
click here for entire interview
Now, you want to find the things that you’re good at, be able to pivot when you need to, and have the network you need to support that.
I’m always trying to push the edge of my understanding, and my value is in providing connections and context.
click here for entire interview
And I thought, here I’ve been stitching this thing together and being called this crazy scatterbrained ADD guy when in fact, what I’ve been trying to do already exists at the Media Lab, and sponsors pay for it!
click to play Kids hard at work that matters. It may take time. It may look ridiculous for a while. But it’s legit. We need to let them know it’s legit. It will change the room.
Could this be bigger than the auto? bigger than electricity?
Bigger or not .. it’s huge.
MIT hiring Joi forges a new mindset. A mindset valuing the human spirit over any policy/standard/etc we have previously adhered to. In education even.
This changes the game. Not that something like this hasn’t happened before. But that it hasn’t happened today. At just this right time.
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.
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
We can do any of that. We can do all of that. And more. Together. We have millions of expert collaborators waiting to be set free, to do stuff that matters. Let’s find out what makes YOUth hungry…. what they can’t not do.
Lab parent on trusting beyond appearances. Holding out, in order to find that true hunger.
Seth on the need for space to find/make/be himself, to procrastinate, daydream.
click to play
Passion comes from within each of us, it cannot be imposed or mandated from outside.
If we are not passionately engaged in a particular domain, it is unlikely that we will invest the effort and energy required to achieve mastery and distinctiveness.
the
- John Hagel
click to play Simon Sinek on why
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. -Albert Einstein
Curiosity isn’t about money or education. It’s about desire. It’s easy to underestimate how difficult it is to be curious.
click to play Seth Godin, curiosity
What wakes kids up? What would wake the community up?
Outcomes, labels, etc, all affect mindfulness and so affect health.
- Ellen Langer, Mindfulness
be mindful.
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.
Elad arrived at the Democratic School of Hadera at the end of tenth grade. His former schools had labeled him as having severe learning disabilities. After a couple of months his mother said Elad had stopped talking at home. Upon finding out that the mother kept asking him about school, Yaacov suggested she ask about anything but school. More time passed. The mother and Elad met again with Yaacov. The mother said that for 2 months they hadn’t said a word about school and nothing had changed. Yaacov shares, Before I could reply, Elad stood between his mother and myself and shouted in a voice I’d never heard from him, “You don’t talk! But your eyes talk!” After a few moments of silence, both Elad and his mother burst into tears. The mother hugged her son, saying that she understood and that he was right. She had so many fears regarding school, and it was hard for her to accept her son as he was. Things changed after that. Elad became Elad. His mother shares, All these years I was busy with diagnose and treatments, now, suddenly I can see my child.
- Yaacov Hecht, Democratic Education
What wakes you up?
click to play
Let’s facilitate that.
a mental visual of the shift:
The following from Maria Bustillos‘: Wikipedia - the death of an expert
The truth of a discipline, idea or episode in history lies in these interstices," he said. "If you want to understand something complicated it's helpful to look at the back and forth of competing voices or views."
There's an enormous difference between understanding something and deciding something. Only in the latter case must options be weighed, and one chosen. Wikipedia is like a laboratory for this new way of public reasoning for the purpose of understanding, an extended polylogue embracing every reader in an ever-larger, never-ending dialectic. Rather than being handed an "authoritative" decision, you're given the means for rolling your own.
Maria Bustillos‘: Wikipedia - the death of an expert
But there continues to be resistance to the idea that expertise itself has been called into question, and we can expect that resistance to continue. Experts, understandably, are apt to be annoyed by their devaluation, and are liable to make their displeasure felt. And the thing about experts is that a lot of people still feel disinclined to question them.
Maria Bustillos‘: Wikipedia - the death of an expert
So long as we believe that there is such a thing as an expert rather than a fellow-investigator, then that person's views just by magic will be worth more than our own, no matter how much or how often actual events have shown this not to be the case. That is not to say that we don't value those who can lead the conversation. We'll need them more and more, ‌ But they might be more like DJs, assembling new ways of looking at things from a huge variety of elements, than like than judges whose processes are secret, and whose opinions are sacred.
Maria Bustillos‘: Wikipedia - the death of an expert
Maybe disagreement doesn't have to be a battle to be fought to the death; it can be embraced, even savored. Wikipedia as it is now constituted lends enormous force to this argument. The ability to weigh conflicting opinions dispassionately and without requiring a "decision" is invaluable in understanding almost any serious question.
Maria Bustillos‘: Wikipedia - the death of an expert
Can we afford to just get craftier at feeding people. Let’s open up spaces where people are free to find their own hunger.
The web can help us create serendipity so that we can facilitate mentors such as this.. click to play If we want to seriously consider a world of equity and redefine the motto of No Child Left Behind we should be facilitating, at the very least, 1-1 relationships such as this, for those who don’t have access to it at home or don’t have a home, as we work on freeing up parents from whatever is holding them back. Deb, a parent in the Lab, just emailed me her very first post about this very thing.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
click to play
click to play
click to play
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.
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.
I was going to practice… then I thought.. naw. - Armando I’ve been waiting on this all my life. These dreams keep me up at night. click to play
Do what you can’t not do.
who decides?
who decides?
TSD Nothing is for everyone. Let’s facilitate that. CONNECTed
A space free to everyone and alluring like the web.. Dennis Littky, the city is our floorplan.
1
A free form curriculum..
click to learn more
2
A community of choice..
click to go to doc
3
A collection of options..
Students are making career based decisions on too little information. –Anya Kamenetz
share/find/create more
options
‌
Thinking on space (physical, emotional, mental) ..
The making of a dream.
A bit of history – if you’re so inclined:
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..
Thinking on space (physical, emotional, mental) .. A bit of history – (cont) In finding hunger, in unleashing people, we found it best to deliberately not teach. Girls self-directing themselves in Spanish, after experiencing the pilot (self-directed) math the previous year, came to the conclusion that they felt more empowered in a space where the adult had no specific expertise to what they were trying to learn. They found, this wasn’t about no structure, but rather about self-structure.
click to play
if snipsnip fails, 3:40-4:18
click to play
:09-:32
Thinking on space (physical, emotional, mental) .. A bit of history – (cont)
Something about agendas, expected outcomes, proven methods, can keep us from delightful possibilities, from owning the learning. (click to play)
Thinking on space (physical, emotional, mental) .. A bit of history – (cont) In trying to facilitate passion within expected curriculum, (actually anything already offered in the district), we found compromise in that inner drive. For example:
We tried to get Gabe to like math, through his connection with skateboarding. Even though we had the most incredible tutor, working with him. The design of the board didn’t work. The physics of the movement didn’t work. We need to let kids like Gabe work from the inside out. This could take time. We could look lazy. We need time and trust if we want this to last, to matter. If we want to find hunger. Gabe is gifted and talented. We just haven’t unleashed him yet. Gabe is not alone.
Thinking on space (physical, emotional, mental) ..
The making of a dream.
A bit of history – (cont) 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.
Thinking on space (physical, emotional, mental) .. A bit of history – (cont) 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) .. A bit of history – (cont)
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.
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.
the Lab: Imagination & Play Pre K-5: vast exposure through games, logic, programming, … dabbling with mentors other than parents 6-8 focus: ongoing exposure, solidifying mentors, working on small personal network Design/prototypes: i&p , be you web, and Patchwork
9-12 – quasi college – Design/prototypes: the Met, detox, and your school design it
Create a space to house our best resources for the arts.
12+ - quasi career Design/prototypes: Cathy Davidson, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke Teachers – google 20% as learners, Teacherpreneurs Your pd design it
Create a space to house our best resources for engineering.
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?
Existing buildings morph into resource centers, meeting spaces, with specialty buildings shared by the community..
over the next 3 years.
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
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
Sam w/board member
one planet
We can do more than act as sensors and share data: we can share our ideas, our frameworks and solutions for sustainability. We have the connectivity – any innovation can spread across the in a matter of seconds. This means that six billion minds could be sharing – should be sharing – every tip, every insight, every brainwave and invention – so that the rest of us can have a go, see if it works, then share the results, so others can learn from our experiences.
entire
planet
- Mark Pesce The Social Sense , The Human Network
The rest of the 78 sec film from slide 2‌. if you are so inclined.
click to play
grazie Nic Askew
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