As I was looking through my Authors@Google subscription this morning I found a talk by Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank. The bank give micro-loans of a few dollars to the poor of Bangladesh who then use the money to start businesses in their villages. The bank has been so successful that 7 million people in Bangladesh now receive loans and the rate of repayment is 98%. I learned about this bank through my wife, Nena, who read Yunus’s book. As I listened to Yunus’s talk about how the bank works I was struck by his approach to teaching the poor of Bangladesh how to start and run a small business. The bank doesn’t “teach” business skills, they believe that everyone is an entrepreneur and all a person needs is someone to believe they can be successful.
Our natural curiosity is like a wild animal; it hunts where it needs to in order to satisfy its deep hunger. As children, we awaken each day with an insatiable appetite to learn. It is in our early years that we are “wolves of learning”. There is a deep, DNA-based, natural connection between learning and survival; call it the burning relevance of the empty stomach.
Pete writes that we have domesticated “the wolves of learning” and children now expect to be feed with out going on the hunt. Unlike Yunus, our education system does not believe that everyone is a natural learner and entrepreneur. We believe that children need to be taught and teachers have the answers. As Yunus has shown that is not true. Or as Pete says,
Let us find ways to give our children back their birthright, their natural curiosity and facility to learn. There have to be ways that we can organize our learning institutions to accommodate individual curiosity and the standardized curriculum. I believe that thoughtful educators can create environments that are less restrictive and provide much more natural habitat for learning. Let us find ways to foster the wildness and thrill of learning again. Let us answer the “Call of the Wild”.
As I was looking through my iTunes downloads I found this video from Edutopia about the Ariel Community Academy in Chicago. What interested me most about the video is that Sec. of Education Arne Duncan supported this school.
This is a quote from the principal’s web page.
Philosophy of Education: Our philosophy is congruent with the Experimentalist philosophy which views change as an ever-present process in a student’s learning experience. Experimentalism insists that curriculum is the subject matter of social experience and instruction is a problem solving, project-oriented process. The role of the teacher is to assist and advise the student, actively participating and contributing to their learning in order to expand and discover the society they live in and share experiences together. We believe that a child’s education at Ariel Community Academy should be based on current and up-to-date research that is supported by the best teaching and learning methods. Therefore, students should be aware of their own multiple intelligences and utilize a wide variety of abilities to demonstrate what they have learned.
The last sentence says to me that the end of high stakes standardized testing is at hand.
I set up a ning for the Bodhisara meditation community I belong to. No one asked me to do it. Boshisara has had a website for a few years and it has good information, but there is no way for members to stay connected. I have been thinking about ways to help the community communicate for several months. The Bodhisara community is scattered across western Massachusetts with several subgroups within the community. Bodhisara is held together by Mark Hart and a loose group of volunteers. Mark’s main way of communicating with the members of the community was through email, which is not the best way to communicate with a large group of people. I had suggested a wiki to Mark, but after seeing the ning that Tricycle has I decided ning really is the way to go. So far the response has been positive and there are a few posts about upcoming events. I am sure that some of the members of the community have never used a ning or any social network before, but as a community we can help each other stay more connected.
The 1:1 wireless laptop classroom is still in the process of being developed. Jake (IT) and I put a package together of 12 Lenovo netbooks, an HP for the teacher, a mimio capture system, and an LCD projector. The classroom has 12 special ed students who learn differently. At the present time there are 8 desktops in various stages of usefulness.
I have been working weekly in the classroom introducing different Web 2.0 tools to the students and the teacher. The students have epal email accounts, a Delicious account and the class has a wiki. The teacher is very excited about the laptops and is eager to learn about integrating technology into the curriculum. She will be going to the MassCUE Technology Leadership Symposium with myself, Jake and 3 other teaches. None of these teaches have been to an edtech conference. If their first exposure to several hundred educators excited about the changes technology can bring to education is anything like mine, their approach to teaching will be changed.
I have been working with some brand new right out of college teachers the last couple of weeks. I am really enjoying their energy, work ethics, and eagerness to learn. But, I am surprised at their lack of Web 2.0 skills. They can text, use My Space and Facebook, download music and images, and IM, but they don’t know what a wiki is or don’t have a blog.
The schools of education in this area have done a great job of making sure the new teachers can write lesson plans with goals and objectives, but not how to incorporate Web 2.0 tools in the curriculum. When I introduce the concept of a wiki or Google Doc to a new teacher they get excited, but often just want to make the wiki another way for the students to do their homework, which is a certain way to kill the wiki. I am reminded of Michael Wesch’s “A Portal to Media Literacy” where he reports that the way education is structured students only want to know what is on the test and how do I get an A.
I am encouraged that by working with new young teachers it is possible to get them to start thinking differently and not repeat their educational experience.
Finding connections between bits of information you gather over time is one of the joys of living.
First bit. I am taking a series of workshop from the Five College Center for East Asian Studies and during the first workshop I learned that for 2000 years the Confucian system of civil service provided a way for men to gain social and economic status. To become a civil servant a man had to memorize the Analects of Confucius, which are several books. If a man could pass a three day long test he could join the civil service and bring honor and money to his family and village.
Second bit. The March 2009 issue of Discover magazine has an article called “Are We Still Evolving?”. The researchers argue that cultural pressure, such as the civil service test, “… in some cultures, certain kinds of intellectual ability may have been tied to reproductive success.”
Third bit. High School graduation rates: Asian 77%, White 75%, Black 50%, Hispanic 53%. Since success in high school is measured by the ability to memorize facts it may be that the students of Asian ancestry have benefited from 2000 years of their ancestors memorizing The Analects of Confucius.
This blog has been bouncing around in my head for two weeks. (This has taken me 3 months to post) The Winter Soldier event finally happened at at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst on Oct 1. This event was conceived and carried out by the local chapter of Iraq Vets Against the War IVAW. I became involved through a friend who was a member of Vets for Peace.
The term ‘Winter Soldier’ is a spin on the opening of a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
The original Winter Soldier event was held Jan. of 1971 in Detroit. For three days Viet Nam vets testified about the war crimes they committed or saw committed. The press did not cover the event, but a film was made and a transcript was entered into the Congressional Record, which led to Senate hearings on the war.
The IVAW Winter Soldier was held in the Student Union and about 100 people attended, mainly students. Four different Iraq area vets gave testimony about their military experiences in and out of Iraq. One of the themes that emerged for me was that most of the vets had “a job” to do. When I talk about my experiences in Viet Nam I explain that I worked the swing shift from 3 pm to midnight, six days a week. The idea that as a soldier they had a job to do was a constant theme. I realized that doing your job will not be enough to win a war of occupation. The occupied are fighting for their lives, families, and country. Soldiers who are “dong their job” can not win.
After the testimony by four Iraq War vets a group was lead by a group of Buddhist monks to a mock grave yard.
The grave yard listed the names of American soldiers and Iraqi children killed in the war. Chanting and silent prayer helped us focus on the sorrow of the war.
Last week one of my co-workers asked me if there was a way to use technology to persuade people to vote for a president of the U.S. who would be a good manager. His argument was that what the country needed was some one who could identify problems and then delegate the responsibility of fixing the problem to competent people. I told him to read Wikinomics because it points out the “perfect storm” of the technological revolution that is changing the way business is and will work. This may give him some insight to use the same concepts in Wikinomics to change government.
I then said that the problem with thinking of the President of the U.S. as the manager-in-chief is that the majority of voters don’t vote with their brains, they vote with their emotions. The president is the father-in-chief for many people. Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse.
After reading George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant and Michael Lerner’s The Left Hand of God I started to understand why it seems some people voted against their own self interest. My own self interest is not another person’s self interest. As a liberal I see the world as generally a safe place with few absolute good vs. evil forces. I see the world as complex with only a few absolute answers. Force does not make right and should only be use when absolutely necessary. I don’t need a father/mother figure telling me what is moral and defining my values. Man and nature are deeply connected and what affects one affects the other. Communities work best when we all are responsible for each other through a responsible government.
A conservative sees the world as a dangerous place and we need a strong father to protect us. There are absolute good vs. evil forces and we need to be strong to attack the evil in the world. The father will define what is moral and punish us if we stray. Man was put on earth to control nature. Each family is responsible for its self and the government is only responsible for protecting the country.
As Lakoff points out, the Republicans have been very good over the last 25 years in identifying the fundamental metaphors of politics and exploiting them. The Democrats keep talking about real problems and how to solve them, but people vote for the person who taps into their need for a father to tell them “I know you are scared and confused, so I will take care of you so you don’t have to look to yourself for any difficult answers.”
I am working on developing a Web 2.0 course I will be teaching for Holyoke Community College starting in late September. I am using my Moodle site to teach the workshop. The course will only be five weeks long and two hours each class. It is frustrating trying to get any depth in these short time workshops. I decided to approach the workshop as tools in a Web 2.0 toolbox. What are the essential Web 2.0 tools? Firefox, gmail, iGoogle, Google reader, wiki. In 10 hours about all you can do is teach the basics.The Moodle workshop will be online so the students will be able to spend some extra time working with the tool box.
I am hoping that a variaty of people sign up for the workshop. I would like to work with people other then teachers, not that I don’t like working with teachers. But, I will spend the the school year with teachers. I am interested in finding out what people can do with Web 2.0 in other careers and in their privent lives.
Well I did it, sent in my proposal for a workshop at the M.A.S.S Technology Conference. I have been telling everyone that will listen about Wikinomics and Here Comes Everybody and that these are two books educators need to read. So when the RFP for the conference showed up in my email I decided to go for it. I have had my own doubts about who am I to bring this to a superintendents convention, I am just a teacher. But, in the spirit of wikinomics anyone can contribute to the knowledge of the many.
I decided to use the power of the wikinomics concept to help me write the proposal and posted it on the edubloggescon.com wiki and asked for feedback, no one responded. It is mid-summer and many educators are taking time to relax and recharge for the next school year. I will keep the wiki page up and ask for feedback from educators who have read either book.
I just got (9/10) an email about the superintendents tech conference and I did not get chosen to present. Looking over the list of presenters it should be a conference worth going to, too bad I can’t. I plan to keep developing this topic because it is important that educators understand the “perfect storm” of changes that are happening due to technological changes that make it easier to share, peer create, and act globally.
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