Oh yes; I like it too. We sat in our yard yesterday with my 12 yr old daughter and asked her to imagine school without walls, without must-do slabs of content memorising for exams. And I was blown away by her engagement with the idea and with sophisticated level of creativity she applied to the idea. And by her passion to make it a reality…

I am at a bit of a crossroads with my thinking about my teaching and would sooo love to cash it all in, buy the Winnebago, and head off around Australia homeschooling my daughter as we go. And then … all that and beyond that for real life learning … my school’s motto is ‘whole of life learning’ but I cant see it happening within the 4-walls of our traditional styled classrooms with the sage on the stage delivering slabs of pregurgitated “learning”.

The crossroads? 21st century learning Vs the same ol’ text book & worksheet & assignments aching to be cut & pasted together….dross year after year. Also trying to work alongside the dispassionate and keep fanning the flames of my own passion so that their cold water attitude doesnt put out my flame. And pushing against the executive and the bureacracy who are steeped in the traditions of 20th century (18th century???) disciplinarian approach to education. If I hear one more teacher say “But they have to learn it for “the Exams”or “to do the assignment” I may well have a little pink hissy fit right there on the spot!!

Will, you fanned a fire with your contributions to discussions in Lorne & I have been envious of the opportunities you have facilitated for Tucker and Tess with their weekly out-of-school learning sessions. BUT I am determined to set up something similar here and especially for my daughter…who as I write is sitting at the other end of the table developing a Wiki for her class because her teacher poured cold water on the idea when it was mentioned because she couldn’t “see” what Sam meant & was afraid of the security risks for the other kids!!

This bit of what you quoted from Chris echoes our post-BBQ lunch discussion yesterday… “personal living networks accompany learners through life – the ultimate educational institution – serving as companion, confidante, and oracle alike”. It is great for our kids that they have parents who think the way we do…BUT…they are numbered in the few; how do we cater for the many?

I decided that this year I was making New Year REVOLUTIONS (http://lgwilliams.edublogs.org) ,I would be keen for you to read and share your ideas.

Portable Learning Environments
Practical Learning Episodes
Proportional Leading Encyclicals
Private Leaping Engineers
Partial Loving Elbows
Projectile Lifelong Entrances
Purple Lizard Entrails
Parrot Lichen Endocrinology
Personal Loading Endtables

I love PLEs. They can be anything! Even better with colorful diagrams of lines connecting shapes, starbursts, little RSS icons.

Just wish I could see one that did not seem like a fuzzy photo of Bigfoot

PLEase

P
L
E
!

Students 2.0 is a baby-step in this direction. Students write, adults read and comment. They’re hooked into twitter as Students2oh and as individuals.

You bet your bottom dollar they’re learning about writing and critical thinking, teamwork and tact, and a million other things through all of this - and there’s no teacher.

It’s a baby step, as I say. But why not the same experiment with different topics than education? And how tweak and steroidify it?

I’m loving your line of thinking lately.

But the credentialing and college admissions ignoring of “what you can do” instead of “what you can score” - those are big obstacles.