We’re blog stuck. Stuck pretty hard actually. Probably a little because of our schedule, the kids’ basketball games, the furnace breaking…life is getting in the way of blogging.

More, however, because we’re butting up against some real questions, and the answers we’re finding in the reading and conversations out there aren’t as satisfying as in the past. This whole School 2.0 thing is the crux of it. There’s this niggling feeling in our brains somewhere that at the end of the day, we’re totally missing the point. That for the most part, we’re all missing the point. That we have to look further outside of our current frames. That much of the structure we are building those frames on is flimsy at best, that we’re too willing to pull pieces of the experience in because they fit and not willing enough to grapple with those that don’t fit. And that the echo chamber makes it all feel good.

We know. We’ve been here before.

We mean, what if we just stop focusing so much on school and just focus on learning? What if the mere term “school” limits our thinking as to what’s best for learning? What if School 2.0—whatever that is—is nothing more than a short term transition to a better system for learning that has nothing to do with physical space in the ways we are familiar with it?

There’s nothing new here, really. We know. What’s new for us at least is that it feels like our lens for all of this is changing. And that’s why we’re stuck as to what to write about here. Our learning and classroom learning look very different. We will never enter another physical classroom as a “student” again, and that’s by choice. That physical space just doesn’t cut it. And schools are all about physical space. And control. And content.

On our way out here to CalCUE yesterday, we read a good chunk of David Shaffer’s How Computer Games Help Children Learn, and he says this: Schools as we know them developed in a particular place and time to meet a specific set of social and economic needs. But times have changed, and the way we need to think about education has changed too.

Schools as we know them developed in a particular place and time to meet a specific set of social and economic needs. But times have changed, and the way we need to think about education has changed too.

Education no longer necessarily means school in the physical, traditional sense for those that have a connection. And again, we know that for some, it never has. But for the masses, it has. We guess we’re wondering in this environment, however, if our best efforts may not be wasted in trying to make relevant an idea that may just be past its use.

And, so we’re pretty stuck…