To the "barricades"

Here is a cross post from 6AM thoughts. I discovered a new type of "school" that is spreading across the Netherlands. It includes so many ideas that I have thought about and tried actually in a face to face world. Rather than try to write about them I thought that I would just embed a video that describes the school so well. Let me know what you think.

Teaching Students in Digital Reality

"Students still need guidance, so that part of the job is still very much relevant. Students also need knowledge to be explained, and shown how it all fits together. In other words, teachers and schools are still required"

The above statement serves as the standard apology for the school paradigm. It is almost mandatory to be included in some form in any article or video that calls for a new way of learning or you will be branded a radical with nothing to say. It is what prevents and real change from taking place. The classroom of school where things are explained and fit together in the patterns of prevailing world view needs to give way to a conversation where information is fit together in a collective analysis. School was not friendly to Einstein, to Bill Gates, to Steve Jobs, to Ken Robinson. The essential power that human beings now have to access the sum total of human knowledge from their hand (smart phone) make school, as it is presently professionally organized, not only irrelevant, but a hindrance to human creativity.

"Information is now available to anyone who is connected, and is available practically whenever they want." is a brilliant insight that does not need to be apologized for. We no longer need a professional teacher class teaching a fixed body of knowledge. We need to share the code of the alphabet and other literacies with learners and join them in the social construction of reality through past experiences, present data input, and future rearranging of the elements of reality. We do not need to learn to think outside of the box, we need to throw the box away.

Longest Railroad Video on You Tube!!!

Everyone who knows me, knows that I love trains and the blues. Well I found a video that claims to be the longest train video (real life) currently on You Tube. It is almost 2 hours long:). I was in heaven. I have embedded it into this post. Enjoy any or all of it.

A video statement of philosophy

I have created a video about my philosophy of education. I hope that you enjoy.

For, in truth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by little and little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes. We see her, at every turn, forcing and violating the rules of nature: "Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister." -Montaigne

A friend of mine invited me to a book discussion on some essays of Michael Montaigne. The above quotation came from an essay entitled "Of Custom, and that We should Not Easily Change a Law Received". He goes on to say "if we consider what we have ordinary experience of, how much custom stupefies our senses." We sell ourselves to the habit of custom so that we can expand the quantity of existence without any thought to the tyranny that we accept so that we lose all of the creativity and originality of our humanity. And then something happens that liberates us from the prison of age and expectations. We do not know how to cope with the backlash that awaits us because the weight of society beats us down, makes us conform.

Happy new Year 2013

Happy New Year to everyone out in the blogosphere!!! The spirit of liberation is blowing through the School For Tomorrow. The first of the fixed periods has disappeared in the morning sessions as the floaters (math and science) no longer have assigned times and lengths of presentation. We are moving forward!!! It began with breakout TDP and is now gaining momentum.

I want to attempt a definition of a Trans-Disciplinary Program. Bruder describes it "The transdisciplinary approach is a framework for allowing members of an educational team to contribute knowledge and skills, collaborate with other members, and collectively determine the services that most would benefit a child." He goes on to say "A transdisciplinary approach requires the team members to share roles and systematically cross discipline boundaries. The primary purpose of this approach is to pool and integrate the expertise of team members so that more efficient and comprehensive assessment and intervention services may be provided. (Bruder, M.B. (1994). p71).

In German speaking countries, a trans-disciplinary approach looks to the " integration of diverse forms of research, and includes specific methods for relating scientific knowledge in problem-solving" ( Mittelstrass, 2003). Jean Piaget introduced the idea of trans-disciplinarity as the unity of knowledge beyond the disciplines. The International Center for Trans-disciplinary Research (CIRET) established the idea that trans-disciplinary approaches transfer the methods of the disciplines to each other to examine a problem and is radically different from interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches. Basarab Nicolescu, a Romanian philosopher, describes three methodological postulates that are necessary to operate from a trans-disciplinary perspective. First is the idea that reality exists on many different levels and must be approached from as many of them as possible. Second, the logic of the middle of reality, where things tend to go, must be recognized and finally, third, the immeasurable complexity of reality. The purpose of trans-disciplinary study is to understand the present world in terms of its social reality. The space between the levels of reality and the disciplines is full of information which we can make sense of only through a trans-disciplinary approach.

Collaboration is also an essential characteristic of a trans-disciplinary approach. Everyone involved in the learning must be a part of the definition of the learning objectives. It is through this collaboration that everyone involved in a trans-disciplinary approach "becomes uniquely capable of engaging with different ways of knowing the world, generating new knowledge, and helping stakeholders understand and incorporate the results or lessons learned by the research" (Wickson, & Carew, . Russell, A.W., 2006).

So a trans-disciplinary approach starts from a simple premise. There are many ways of knowing the world. A TDP group must then look at the world using many different methodologies or ways of knowing. The ways of the poet are as valid as the ways of the research physicist or the historian. They examine reality from a distinct perspective. All members of the group learn and use the different methodologies to examine what "they want to know". The purpose of the rest of the group is to help a learner do that. Sort of how your guild helps you on a WOW quest.

Whatever we do in our TDP sections, we must all be involved, as both teachers and learners. We all want to know stuff and we all have experience in ways of learning, of coming to know. We have to learn what others know as learners and we have to teach what we know to those who want to learn it.

A song and new album from the Drop Kick Murphys

It is the season of Christmas from the Drop Kick Murphys. Enjoy and chuckle at the truth behind the exaggeration of song.

Chris Matthews takes off the Gloves!!!

Chris Matthews finally confronted the hidden issue in the campaign...Mitt is White and Barak is Black..

The World Beyond the Word

Here is a great slide share from Stephen Downes on the world after text only!!

Big Jay McNeely - Live in LA blowing up a storm

Maybe it will blow away the pain of thinking about Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate. The people need to speak!!

Get Down Blues---the real thing-just Wailing!!!

GYOD (Grow your own dinner)

A great Ted Talk that the Innovative Educator (Lisa Neilsen)brought to my attention and I thought I would bring to you. Stephen Ritz, a South Bronx teacher, made school real for his students. If only we all had his courage and imagination.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)

I am a huge advocate of BYOD in school. If you have thought at all about the issue, then this video is for you. If you have not thought at all about the issue then this video is a great place to start. If you do not care about the issue, then this video may just tickle your curiosity. Give it a look. A

American Uprising by Daniel Rasmussen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

American Uprising changed the way I look at the world. The measure of a book to me is

that it teaches me something about something I am interested in and changes my mental image of this subject. In the case of American Uprising that subject was slavery. I never understood the relationship between the sugar islands and the Louisiana Purchase. I knew there were sugar plantations in Louisiana but not to the extent that they existed. Sugar Slavery was different from Slavery in the rest of American states and territories and this book illuminates that difference clearly.

The book's problem is that it lacks the usual historical method of verifying of its conclusions about how the Uprising occurred. The nitty gritty of the uprising is not what is important about this book. The real value of the book is its illumination of slavery in the new American territory. This may not have been what Rasmussen set out to do, but it is what he accomplished brilliantly.




View all my reviews

History,gaming and Learning-a repost from 6AM Thoughts and below on this blog

I know that is has been almost two months since I have posted to this blog. If you are reading it I thank you and hope that your time is considered to have been well spent when you are finished. Spring has perked me up again.

I love history, to teach it, to read it, and to write it. I like to do all of those things at the same time. Modern technology has not changed history but it has changed the way we create it, explore it, and present it.

I also love games. I learn so many things from playing games, utilizing my imagination, and creating new narratives of human history with me in the cat bird seat. I have lived and fought the American Revolution more times that I can remember and will fight it again and again as long as I play or read about it. I have sat in rooms and tents with great generals and political leaders in France, Russia, and Germany and China. I have thought the thoughts of the great thinkers of my culture. I have done most of this by reading and playing games.

In life, we learn lessons by trial-and-error. We burn our hand on the stove as children and therefore learn that the stove gets hot. Over time we realize it gets hot because its purpose is to cook food. Some of us learn how the stove works and become mechanics or industrial engineers; others of us become chefs. Most of us just realize to keep our hands out of hot stuff. But we all learn by doing and by making mistakes.-Shelly Blake-Pollock

This morning I was reading the post on Teachpaperless. It made me think of history and how we can re-write the narrative over and over inside of a simulation and and learn so much about how to exist inside of a culture. When I was reading this I began thinking about teaching and learning history which has been my passion since I can remember. Teaching history is really just telling stories about our memories, our past. Learning it is the same--a pure act of imagination based on scrapes of evidence in the present which we re-arrange into new patterns and pictures as we discover more or gain new insights from what we have. We cannot touch the stove any longer to see if it is hot. We have to trust our memory for where the stoves are. Unless we simulate the past we cannot really learn from it. We have to find someway to "re-heat" the stove.

These thoughts remind me of Jane McGonigal's incredible book, Reality is Broken, which reminded me that reality is constructed and can be re-constructed through gaming, which re-heats the stove. Games

allow us to re-do the past in terms of our present and learn about who we are as human beings. Games allow to re-heat the stove without real burns. Games allow us to practice for life! Games allow us to teach!!

Hoochie Coochie Man--Sugar Blue and Muddy Waters

This rendition of Muddy Waters, "Hoochie Coochie Man" by Sugar Blue demanded a blog post all of its own. Here it is...It was created at the Bern Jazz Festival in 1995. God I love the blues.

Here is Muddy Waters doing his tune in 2009. Pure artistry!

"Play is not anarchy"

Tim Brown presented a Ted Talk that just may give us a model for revolution in learning that everyone talks about and cheers but really are not doing anything about. It may be a script for re-design. We need to explore, build, and role play our ideas. The Ted Talk is worth a watch!

The Song of Clio.....

I know that is has been almost two months since I have posted to this blog. If you are reading it I thank you and hope that your time is considered to have been well spent when you are finished. Spring has perked me up again.

I love history, to teach it, to read it, and to write it. I like to do all of those things at the same time. Modern technology has not changed history but it has changed the way we create it, explore it, and present it.

I also love games. I learn so many things from playing games, utilizing my imagination, and creating new narratives of human history with me in the cat bird seat. I have lived and fought the American Revolution more times that I can remember and will fight it again and again as long as I play or read about it. I have sat in rooms and tents with great generals and political leaders in France, Russia, and Germany and China. I have thought the thoughts of the great thinkers of my culture. I have done most of this by reading and playing games.

In life, we learn lessons by trial-and-error. We burn our hand on the stove as children and therefore learn that the stove gets hot. Over time we realize it gets hot because its purpose is to cook food. Some of us learn how the stove works and become mechanics or industrial engineers; others of us become chefs. Most of us just realize to keep our hands out of hot stuff. But we all learn by doing and by making mistakes.-Shelly Blake-Pollock

This morning I was reading the post on Teachpaperless. It made me think of history and how we can re-write the narrative over and over inside of a simulation and and learn so much about how to exist inside of a culture. When I was reading this I began thinking about teaching and learning history which has been my passion since I can remember. Teaching history is really just telling stories about our memories, our past. Learning it is the same--a pure act of imagination based on scrapes of evidence in the present which we re-arrange into new patterns and pictures as we discover more or gain new insights from what we have. We cannot touch the stove any longer to see if it is hot. We have to trust our memory for where the stoves are. Unless we simulate the past we cannot really learn from it. We have to find someway to "re-heat" the stove.

These thoughts remind me of Jane McGonigal's incredible book, Reality is Broken, which reminded me that reality is constructed and can be re-constructed through gaming, which re-heats the stove. Games

allow us to re-do the past in terms of our present and learn about who we are as human beings. Games allow to re-heat the stove without real burns. Games allow us to practice for life! Games allow us to teach!!

Let's Get Political with the Music

A European history teacher posted this music to his class blog. Marx and his sociological analysis still have a place in this world. Inspired me to re-read the Communist Manifesto and down load a new copy of Kapital to my computer.

Flogging Molly get very proletarian in their music on the Speed of Darkness album. Revolution might be the best song on the CD.

Don't Shut 'em Down is another great labor song...
And lets wind this up with The Power's Out