But in the process of building this exhibit, I also realized that it could be so much more than just a virtual gallery - it could become a learning environment, a place that anyone interested in education in Kenya could visit and explore. So, the initial virtual gallery idea quickly morphed into “unfinished …” - a project to build a virtual Kenyan classroom, a typical classroom in a typical rural school in Kenya.

Of course, some will say that I didn’t have to use Second Life, that a blog entry, a Flickr set, or a PowerPoint presentation (or maybe all of them combined) would have been just as effective. That’s why, before I began, I asked myself: What can I do in Second Life that I cannot do on the world wide web? Why do I need a multiuser virtual environment?

I wanted the visitors to be able to experience, even if only virtually, what it is like to stand in a typical rural Kenyan classroom. I can’t do that on my blog, but in Second Life I can create that classroom. I can try to re-create that environment. Of course, as a visitor to my classroom exhibit in Second Life, you won’t feel the fine Kenyan dust on the floor - the kind of dust that penetrates into everything in Kenya. You won’t be able to interact with Kenyan students or look through their notebooks. I cannot create tactile experiences in Second Life. What I can do, however, is create a visual experience that is very close to what I saw in Kenya. I can create a replica of a typical classroom and then use it as the setting for tours, presentations, or conversations about education in Kenya. I can create a virtual environment that provides a meaningful context for discussions about education in developing nations.

That environment wouldn’t be complete without photographs of children and school life that I took while in Kenya. You will find them scattered around the exhibit. You will see photographs of children and classrooms leaning against a virtual fence or the classroom wall.

Again, an argument could be made that all those pictures could have been shared on Flickr. True. I did share them on flickr, but as soon as I uploaded them I realized that they didn’t fully represent my experiences, that individual photographs, when placed against the white backdrop of a flickr photo page, lose their richness and become just another snapshot. In Second Life, however, I can create an environment for them, a context that will help the visitor see them as part of a larger story.

When building this virtual space, I tried to make the environment as reminiscent of the actual schools in Kenya as possible. Many of the textures I used for walls or corrugated iron panels were extracted from my own photographs of Kenyan schools and imported into Second Life. Before I built the desks for the virtual classroom, I scrutinized the pictures I took of student desks in Kenyan classrooms. Before building the classroom itself, I carefully analyzed my pictures of rural schools in Kenya.

Why “unfinished …”?

I chose this title because when I first walked into a classroom in rural Kenya, everything around me seemed … unfinished - the bare walls and gaping holes instead of windows all contributed to that impression. It seemed that the classrooms were still under construction. Of course, the sad truth is that the classrooms I visited were all finished - there simply isn’t enough money at many of the schools in Kenya to put in windows or buy new desks. There simply isn’t enough money to put plaster on the walls, buy bulletin boards, or put up posters.

Not every classroom in Kenya looks like the one I created in Second Life. Some schools are better equipped than others. Some classrooms have windows and plaster on walls instead of bare bricks. Some have new desks. Many have electricity. The classroom I built in Second Life, however, is not atypical of rural classrooms in Kenya. It represents rural schools and the country itself quite well. In Kenya, many things, including roads, schools, buildings, and public services, seem … unfinished.

The work that Teachers Without Borders - Canada has begun in Kenya is also unfinished. We had initiated great projects, worked with many teachers, and established valuable contacts with ministry officials and other NGOs. We look at these accomplishments as work in progress and an opportunity to continue to move towards our goals. One of those goals - and my goal for this virtual exhibit - is to raise awareness of some of the challenges faced by teachers, students, and administrators in developing nations.

I hope that you will take the time to walk through the exhibit and experience school life in a rural Kenyan classroom. The following link will take you into Second Life, to the island of jokaydia where the project is hosted: (SLurl to the Virtual Kenya Exhibit).

Virtual Kenya Project Machinima
(Link to the original file on blip.tv)

Interested in a Tour?

If you like what you see and would like to bring your students or colleagues into this space, or learn more about education in Kenya or the work of Teachers Without Borders - Canada, please feel free to contact me. I’ve given a number of tours already and would be happy to chat about the space or help you build a lesson around this virtual exhibit.

Let’s start with South Africa, a country that is incomparably richer than Kenya, a country where quite often, apart from the times we spent in the townships, we felt like we were still in North America. It is a country of many contrasts and I feel privileged that I was able to get a glimpse into the part of South Africa that does not appear on postcards or in travel brochures. The part I’m referring to has been described by Robert Cohen in the latest issue of the Inroads magazine as one where

there is still a huge gap between the halves and the have-nots. Only now there are starting to be Blacks on the have side. Unemployment remains stuck at 25 per cent, not including people who have given up looking for work. An underclass is trapped in the “second economy” of subsistence agriculture, hawking, begging and crime [...]

Moreover, about 5.5 million South Africans are living with HIV … This includes 18.8 per cent of adults aged 15 to 49. With 1000 deaths a day, South Africa is home to the largest number of infected people on the whole planet. Among 15- to 24-year-old pregnant women, figures from antenatal clinics show rates around 30 per cent. A whole generation of orphans is being raised by grandparents, their parents dead of AIDS (Cohen, 2008).

Of course, this side of South Africa is not always very clear to those who visit the country to enjoy many of its breathtaking tourist attractions. Our team, however, worked in the townships outside of Cape Town where we soon became very well acquainted with the side of South Africa that tourists don’t often get to see. John Ehinger, my TWB colleague, explained this world of South African townships very well in his reflection posted on the TWB-Canada Ning site:

The two schools I worked in were in the Mitchell’s Plains and Guguletu Townships. As I learned, “Townships” are the shanty-town neighbourhoods of the black and coloured peoples in the country of South Africa. They are basically poor suburbs with shack-like homes composed of wood and tin (currently being ever-so-slowly upgraded to brick/stucco). The townships are usually within a long bus or train-ride of the major South African cities, where many of the inhabitants find work in the service and manufacturing sectors. The terms “black and coloured” still linger from the separateness that was legislated by the Apartheid Regime of the National Party in 1950 (lasting until 1994), and Apartheid still leaves its mark on the poor of this country, as there remains a distinction between being “white”, “coloured” or “black”.

[...]

But in 2008, times are slowly changing – improvements are being made, mostly due to the unshakable spirit of the people living in these neighbourhoods. Townships are being re-built by local families in conjunction with international NGOs such as Habitat For Humanity. Schools, while challenged by extremely large class-sizes and a host of other issues, are providing better and better education. Clean and safe drinking water and food are more readily available for those who have the money, and there is a burgeoning spirit of entrepreneurship that reminds me of home. Don’t get me wrong - the poverty here is palpable, and the crime-rate is alarming – but there is hope and energy.

We conducted two workshops with South African teachers - one in the township of Mitchell’s Plain (Glendale Secondary ) and one in the township of Gugulethu (Fezeka High School ). Here’s a summary of the workshops by the President of Teachers Without Borders - Canada , Noble Kelly :

Though some of these educators had had some exposure and workshops on computer use, they have not really made the transition into integrating technology across the curriculum or looked at the big picture of an implementation/use plan. As the workshops progressed, the teachers were excited to try many of the new Web 2.0 technologies and had productive discussions on developing a school wide plan for implementation as well as department and lesson level integration ideas.

An important outcome of the workshops was to get participants connected with other educators from South Africa and other countries to collaborate and grow. To that end, those who did not have emails were walked through the process and then we looked at creating an online professional development community with the use of wikis and blogs.

In other words, we focused on basic computer literacy skills (Microsoft Office, browsing, file and email management, editing images). In our other sessions, we focused on more advanced topics, such as blogging, wikis, and even Moodle. We concluded both workshops by focusing on teacher professional development.

As the member of the TWB team responsible for the professional development session , I wanted to focus on initiating and sustaining conversations that extend beyond school walls. Throughout the workshops, the South African teachers showed a lot of interest not just in expanding their ICT literacy and integration skills but also in learning about what teaching and learning are like in the developed world. They seemed very interested in getting a glimpse into what our classrooms are like and how we use Web 2.0 tools to engage students.

So, the focus of my session was on connecting with other teachers - those working outside of South Africa but also those who work in the same school or the same district. I wanted the teachers to see that the networks they can create locally can be just as meaningful, supportive, and valuable as conversations with people around the world. So, we shared with them some of the tools and platforms that we use to connect with each other . The response to this session was very enthusiastic. In fact, our surveys done at the end of our workshops show clearly that the teachers enjoyed and benefited from every one of our sessions - the ones on file management and the more advanced ones on Moodle and blogging.

In short, we have a lot to be proud of. And yet, I know that a lot still needs to be done. During my recent Skype conversation with Swallow Khume , a history teacher and ICT Coordinator at Fezeka High School , I found out that, in his opinion, the enthusiasm for ICT integration has fizzled out. He admitted that teachers have benefited immensely from our workshops and that many still feel empowered by what they have learned. So, we brainstormed how we can continue to encourage and support the teachers in his school and his district. We plan to offer some live professional development sessions (Swallow suggested Skype) - opportunities for teachers to connect, exchange ideas, and develop partnerships. It was good to hear that our workshops have made a difference - Swallow sees the potential at his school for a big shift and I am committed (and I know the other TWB members are too) to helping him support his teachers and build on the foundations that we have laid with our workshops in July.

But this will not be an easy task. While at Fezeka, I learned that access to technology is a challenge. The teachers were enthusiastic and very committed to their own professional development, but they all made it clear to us that ICT integration is not easy when the school has only 43 computers for its 1700 students and over 50 teachers. Using Web 2.0 tools is a challenge when Internet use at school is capped at, on average, 7 gigabytes per month. When this limit is reached in two weeks, the school has no Internet access for the rest of the month.

So, challenges do exist, but the work we have done in South Africa provided an important foundation and demystified teaching with technology. The school’s principal is committed to working out a computer lab schedule to ensure that more teachers and more classes have access to the lab. He is also thinking of raising enough funding to put one computer in most of the classrooms. He also wants to have a computer with an Internet connection in the staffroom. “The key,” he said to me at the end of our workshop, “is to ensure that teachers have easy access to the technology. If they do, they will feel more comfortable using it in their teaching.” I agree with him and am comforted by the fact that two organizations that were instrumental to our success in Cape Town, Edunova and Khanya , will continue to support the school in the area of ICT integration. I hope that they will also continue to provide Teachers Without Borders - Canada with their insights gained from working with local schools, administrators, and teachers.

When Noble Kelly reflected on the South African workshops , he said:

Overall, the workshops were well received and the participants were very excited to start using their newly acquired skills. They realize what a great resource they have and wanted to start using it to assist in engaging their students and enhancing learning and their own professional development. From our survey, 100% of participants indicated that they increased at least one level of proficiency in their skills and knowledge (a majority jumped at least two levels) and that they would like to see more of these types of workshops and for a longer duration.

I think our challenge now lies in ensuring that the support we provide does not end when the TWB team leaves the schools. I plan to be in close contact with the schools, the teachers, Edunova, and Khanya to ensure that there is a kind of networked support coming from a variety of nodes - teachers outside of South Africa, TWB members, and local organizations.

Whenever I think back on our South African workshops, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a teacher at Fezeka High School. When I asked if she found the workshop helpful, she said:

This workshop gave us a chance to focus on the technology for one week without any distractions. We’ve had computer training before, after school, but we had to also teach, so we couldn’t devote all our attention to this. This is very helpful. I hope we can have the time to continue to practice and that we have enough computers.

It is that sense of hope, a positive attitude, and a very strong belief that “education is key” that drive the country forward. Certainly, the teachers that we worked with all embody that attitude. I think they would all agree with the words of Robert Cohen when he writes that South Africa is

a new nation that is promising yet vulnerable, always inspirational but at time outrageous and almost maddening, impressive in the solidarity in its efforts to improve the lot of the people yet driven by the demons of its history. The challenges it will face are many and daunting. Yet on balance, as a work in progress, South Africa remains a beacon to the world. It has proven equal if not superior to comparable countries in its ability to resolve conflicts and manage its economy (Cohen, 2008).

I have seen those “demons of its history,” and I’ve seen the promise and the potential. What we have started this past summer is a work in progress. The focus now is to continue to build capacity by maintaining meaningful connections and raising funds and awareness to ensure that TWB-Canada can continue its vision of closing the education divide through teacher professional development and community education .

_________

References:

She’s five, maybe six years old, and her eyes are glued to my camera. After some hesitation, she comes up to me and says,
“Can I see?”
I kneel down on the wet concrete and show her the camera. I point to the viewfinder. She puts her small hand on mine and gingerly lowers the camera to her eye level. She looks through the viewfinder and smiles. She can see Sharon and the other children . Then, her eyes big and innocent and happy, she looks at me and says, “Do you have money?”

And then, back in the car, going back to the guesthouse in Cape Town where we’re staying for the duration of our project, I find myself overwhelmed by emotions. Today is my third day in Cape Town working with Teachers Without Borders Canada. Today is when it hits me: In the grand scheme of things, how much can we really do to help?

My thoughts take me back to some of the conversations that I’ve had with South African teachers this past week. The teachers who attended our Teachers Without Borders ICT Workshop here in Cape Town have been very enthusiastic about learning how to integrate technology into their lessons. They were the first to admit that the “chalk and talk” approach that is so common in their schools bores students. They told us that they want to differentiate instruction, to engage their students in learning. “I want my students to want to stay in my class,” one of them said to me at lunch.

The teachers who participated in our workshop were true lifelong learners. I was very impressed by their passion for learning. They embraced Moodle, they embraced blogging, and their questions and comments made it clear that they see technology integration as a complex, but rewarding task. They want to invest in themselves so that they can improve the learning experiences for their students. When Sharon showed them the four XOs that she was lucky enough to have donated to this project by various institutions and individuals in Canada, the whole room started buzzing . They all wanted to see them. They all wanted to test them. When we took out our Flip cameras , the reaction was equally enthusiastic. Then, at lunch, one of the teachers said to me, “I understand what you mean about engagement. When my students ask me, ‘Miss, what does this word mean?’ I tell them to take out their cell phones and find out for themselves. I want them not to always ask me.” (I was surprised to see how ubiquitous cell phones are here).

Of course, they all realize that integrating technology in a meaningful way, in a way that engages and challenges the learners takes time. They know that learning how to use Moodle, for example, is a long process. But what I found truly inspiring about the teachers we worked with is that they were undaunted by these challenges and, in fact, always took the time to consider how the technology could be best integrated into their existing curricula. They did not look at blogging, for example, as a panacea that would automatically engage their students and make them excellent writers. They thought first and foremost about how it could best be used in their classrooms. They thought of their context and how blogging could be used to enforce some of the excellent approaches that they’re already using as teachers of English, or social sciences, or math. When I mentioned how blogging with my students necessitated a shift in my teacherly voice, they all agreed. “This takes a lot of work, but we have to do this for our students,” one of them told me. Yes, it is a challenge. Undergoing that shift is difficult for all teachers. It dethrones us from the privileged, traditional position of the expert. How wonderful to see that teachers here do not cling to that role and want to empower their students.

Of course, it’s easy to see why. In our informal interactions at lunch and during breaks, the South African teachers told us repeatedly that their country is a “young democracy” and that it “needs time to grow.” One of the comments that I heard over and over again from the teachers was that “education is key.” This morning, when we first drove into the township of Langa, the oldest area of black resettlement in Cape Town (created in 1927), our tour guide echoed the statement I’d heard so many times from the teachers, “Education is key.” He meant that it’s key to individual success and opportunities, and key as a solution to the crippling poverty that surrounded us as soon as we entered the township.

Such a simple, yet powerful realization. “Education is key.” This is why I’m here. This is why I signed up to be part of this Teachers Without Borders project in South Africa. It’s also an answer to the question that’s been troubling me ever since my brief encounter this morning with that five-year-old girl: In the grand scheme of things, how much can we really do to help? As many of the people I have met since I arrived here last week have emphasized, the answer is quite clear: Education is key.

So, we will continue to have conversations with the teachers here. We will continue to assist them as they develop technology integration approaches that are grounded in the existing South African contexts. We will continue to remind each other that, as Paulo Freire argued in many of his writings, teachers are political beings who can effect change only if they see themselves as political agents and not mere handout technicians.

————-

If you’re interested in learning more about our TWB projects this summer, please read Sharon Peters’ entry .

- John Dewey, Democracy and Education

I’ve written about this before, but the concept of engaging students in conversations and engaging, as an educator, in conversational assessment, is something that I continue to investigate.

Of course, it is not easy to have meaningful and authentic conversations with students about a literary text that they’re reading. First of all, they know very well that I’m an expert - even if I don’t see myself as one. Therefore, they are absolutely convinced that they cannot contribute anything to the discussion that I don’t already know. No matter how much I try to show them that there are still many aspects of a given topic that I am not very familiar with, students persist in their belief that teachers are experts.

So, I often try to start conversations and create activities that are just as challenging for me as they are for them. This calls for quite a bit of creativity and forces me to abandon tried and tested lesson plans.

Last month, I decided to help my students engage with Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl as more than just a literary text. I wanted them to look at it as an experience, as life written down by someone their own age. They find it difficult not to treat the diary as just another "big book" that they study at school. I wanted them to think about Anne as a person and her diary as a personal record. I wanted them to have an opportunity to engage with the text and think about what Anne’s words and experiences meant to them. I wanted to create an avenue for a personal connection - not an easy task in a classroom setting where every text we study is likely to be perceived as a literary text first and a personal experience second. At the same time, I also wanted to engage myself as a participant. I wanted to model the kind of personal engagement I wanted my students to experience.

It occurred to me that one way of doing this would be to create a soundtrack for the diary. So, I spent some time browsing through the SeeqPod and SkreemR archives on the mixwit page . The next day, I walked into our classroom and explained to my students how I got the idea:

I always listen to music when I read. Last night I was listening to Mozart and re-reading parts of the diary for our discussion today. Suddenly, I realized that the piece I was listening to suited the passage I was reading perfectly. It felt almost like the best soundtrack for that specific passage. So, I decided to make a list of songs and classical pieces that, in my opinion, would work well as a soundtrack for Anne’s diary.

And then I showed them the soundtrack I had made and we listened to a couple of tracks. I saved my soundtrack using mixwit’s highly visual interface and then embedded it in my blog in the grade eight blogosphere:

(Click here if the above widget does not work)

Then, I continued:

I want you to know that this took a long time and I found it very difficult to choose the songs. I kept searching the mixwit database for all kinds of songs that I thought would be perfect, but then I realized that the lyrics didn’t really work or that the song was actually very different from how I remembered it. In other words, I had to spend quite a bit of time not just coming up with possible song titles for this but also justifying my choices.

So, I would like you to do the same. Create a mixwit account and then search the database for tracks that, in your opinion, would be perfect for a soundtrack for The Diary of a Young Girl . There’s one catch, though: You have to be able to justify your decisions.

And then the conversations started. The one thing that made a huge impact was that I had challenged them to create something that I myself had already done. They could interact with my playlist and learn from the process I had engaged in prior to starting their own. They could critique my work and analyze it before embarking on their own journey of creating a soundtrack. In other words, I had entered the classroom and started the conversation as a participant. Creating my own mixwit tape placed me in the position of a learner. I eagerly shared with them my experiences of using mixwit and choosing the appropriate songs.

The point here is that what they were encouraged to do was not based on an abstract assignment description. I had entered the classroom with evidence of my own meaningful personal engagement with the diary, not just a typed handout explaining what they had to do.

This exercise led to a number of meaningful conversations with my students about Anne Frank, her writing, and our interpretations of her personality and her work. The fact that they all needed to justify their musical choices ensured that the conversations we had focused not just on the music but also, perhaps primarily, on the text. I had many one-on-one conversations with my students in which they talked about specific aspects of Anne’s personality and shared their knowledge of popular music with me. They read and listened to the lyrics carefully because they realized that the choices had to be justified and couldn’t be in any way offensive to the sanctity of the text written by a girl their age who perished in the Holocaust. This wasn’t just about listening to music, it was about making connections, and they all realized that, in order to make them, they had to become very familiar with both the songs and the text - I had encouraged them to become experts.

I was also pleased that this activity gave all of us an opportunity to engage with the diary in a new and unique way. The students still studied the text, they still had to think about Anne as a person and a writer, but they had to do it in a context that rarely enters our classrooms, one that certainly is never present when we discuss literary texts.

I learned that entering the community as a participant allowed me to have conversations with my students that they did not perceive as instructional. Yes, they were talking to Mr.Glogowski about their songs and their reasons for picking them, but it did not feel like school talk.

Here are some examples of what they created:

… and, of course, the best thing about this was that there was no rubric or evaluation sheet. Why? Because when you listen to student soundtracks for The Diary of a Young Girl and the music works, the music fits, you just know the students did a great job … and they do too - not because they received a rubric with a high mark, but because their work emerged from meaningful conversations with each other and the teacher.

Leigh Blackall’s work on the islands of jokaydia in Second Life is truly inspiring. We’ve had many discussions since he agreed to take part in my Virtual Classroom Project and it’s been fascinating to observe his progress. I envisioned the Virtual Classroom Project as an opportunity to explore alternatives to our traditional notions of teaching, learning, and, specifically, learning space design. I’m pleased that Leigh, the project’s first Educator-in-Residence, has taken up that challenge by sharing a unique and thought-provoking concept. I cannot wait to see the finished project and am looking forward to further discussions with Leigh.

Before I delve into my first reflection on his work, I’d like to encourage you to follow his progress and take part in a virtual workshop that Leigh and I will be hosting this weekend on the islands of jokaydia, the home of the Virtual Classroom Project.

Leigh’s Project - A Brief Introduction

As soon as Leigh announced his plans for a virtual prototype of a learning space based on the principles of permaculture design I was hooked. I realized that, to Leigh, the Virtual Classroom Project presented an opportunity to address learning as a fundamental part of our daily existence. “Leigh’s ideas,” I wrote in my project notes, “suggest that he wants to explore the process of de-institutionalizing learning. He seems interested in asking why learning cannot be grounded in informal places, places that we take for granted, such as our homes.” But Leigh took this one step further. If our place of residence is to serve as a focal point of learning in our lives, then we need to start asking ourselves some crucial questions about the kinds of places we inhabit and the relationship between those places and the environment. In other words, Leigh believes that the process of de-institutionalizing learning cannot lead to creating places that are as insensitive to the natural world around them as the big institutions that currently dominate our lives and, specifically, education. One could extend this argument and ask “What exactly are children learning in a school that does not have a recycling programme? What are they learning in a building that’s surrounded by concrete?” I think that Leigh’s project effectively addresses both of these questions.

Leigh’s use of permaculture design, defined by Wikipedia as “an approach to designing human settlements, in particular the development of perennial agricultural systems that mimic the structure and interrelationship found in natural ecologies,” suggests that he is interested in exploring to what extent human beings can be engineers of their own self-sufficient and ecologically-friendly environments. His design revolves around the notion of sustainability and is based on re-using discarded shipping containers because, as he says,

they are readily available for reuse, reasonably cheap, structurally sound, transportable (obviously), durable, and come in remarkably good dimensions for proportioning an efficient living and working space.

But Leigh does not use these containers to re-create the kind of institutional, impersonal teaching/learning space that we’ve all experienced in our lives as both teachers and learners. Instead of building a classroom, a lecture hall, or a place formally designated as a space for teaching and learning, Leigh decided to build a

family house that is large enough to host 15 or so people from time to time, but practical as a family home; that is fully self sufficient in providing for its own energy, water and food needs; that is a system that produces no waste; and that uses building materials and structures that are reused, portable and make minimal impact on the area being occupied.

Leigh’s Project - Key Ideas

In one of his blog posts devoted to the Virtual Classroom Project, Leigh states that he is interested in

efficient use of space and resources; space design that is conducive to inquiry learning and skills training; and [...] every single aspect serving some form of opportunity for learning.

Let’s think about this carefully - “every single aspect serving some form of opportunity for learning.” What this means to me is that Leigh wants his family home to be more than just walls. The physical space here is not designed to be a mere container for teaching and learning. Instead, the space he’s building is a kind of portal where every aspect of its design can lead an inquiring mind to discoveries about sustainability, permaculture design, or the environmentally friendly lifestyle. For example, the solar panels that he’s planning to use and the small wind turbine already in place can lead to an interesting discussion on energy consumption.

The shipping containers, the very walls of the house, can lead to a discussion on reusing and recycling.

The roof of the dwelling and the glass floor panels inside the house can lead to a discussion on the importance of natural light and the need to reduce our dependence on electricity.

In short, the building itself provides numerous opportunities to discuss our ecological footprint and engage in discussions about the environment and eco-friendly lifestyles. Now, the question is, where would you rather learn about all of this - in a sterile classroom that looks like all the other classrooms around the world, or in a unique family home built upon the principles of permaculture design? Would you rather learn this from a teacher who has to deliver a unit on sustainability or from an individual who is passionate about the environment and whose home and lifestyle attest to his commitment to the environment?

What really fascinates me about Leigh’s prototype is that, in addition to making us think about sustainability and the environment, Leigh also explores the notion of de-institutionalizing or deschooling society. His project revives some of the key ideas of Ivan Illich. During our discussions over the past two weeks, Leigh’s comments about his design led me to re-visit my thoughts on informal education, lifelong learning, and community. Specifically, his ideas and the way he is implementing them remind me of Illich’s notion that institutions tend to dehumanize people and commodify learning. Consider this passage from Ilich’s Deschooling Society:

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value (Illich, 1973).

In other words, our students tend to think that teaching equals learning. Learning and knowledge are commodified and transform education into a process of consumption rather than exploration. In addition, as Illich argues in Deschooling Society, schools discourage other institutions from assuming educative roles and tend to be places of confinement rather than liberating engagement. De-institutionalization, Illich argues, can take place when we recognize that education “relies on the surprise of the unexpected question which opens new doors for the inquirer and his partner.” This kind of inquiry can take place when the instructor abandons what Illich calls “skill drill” instruction and focuses on helping “matching partners to meet so that learning can take place.” Learners, he continues,

should be able to meet around a problem chosen and defined by their won initiative. Creative, exploratory learning requires peers currently puzzled about the same terms or problems. Large universities make the futile attempt to match them by multiplying their courses, and they generally fail since they are bound to curriculum, course structure, and bureaucratic administration. In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern (Illich, 1973).

Leigh’s project reminds me of some of Illich’s alternatives to teaching institutions. Specifically, the family home that he’s building can become a place where those who are “currently puzzled about the same terms or problems” can meet outside of institutional constraints and engage in exploratory learning. It’s a place that supports what Illich referred to as “life of action:”

I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies (Illich, 1973).

After numerous conversations with Leigh and after reading his reflections, I see his virtual project as what Illich calls a convivial institution. It’s an institution that, unlike school, is not based on coerced membership. Instead, it encourages human interactions that are based on autonomy, creativity, and exploration. I also see Leigh’s project as a potential learning web and I’m looking forward to discussing this aspect of his work with him over the next two weeks.

If you’re interested in Leigh’s views on learning and would like to explore his prototype (still in progress), please join us this weekend on the islands of jokaydia (Click here for details).

But there are other, equally important reasons. EduCon provides an opportunity to meet many of the incredibly inspiring people whose work over the past few years contributed to my professional growth as an educator and a researcher. A couple of days ago, when I read carefully the list of all participants and presenters, I realized that going to EduCon will be like walking into my Google Reader, except that we’ll finally be able to shake hands!

I look forward to meeting some of my long-time virtual mentors: Will Richardson, Chris Lehmann, Christian Long, Patrick Higgins, David Warlick, and Joyce Valenza to name just a few. Their work has been instrumental in helping me with my doctoral research journey.

Also, along with Sharon Peters and Mario Asselin, I will be part of a small Canadian contingent. Sharon and I met at a conference last year and have stayed in touch ever since. I know that this conference will give us yet another opportunity to chat about curriculum and professional development. I have never met Mario, however, but his work as Principal of Institut St-Joseph in Quebec City inspired me at the very beginning of my doctoral research to follow the example set by his school and use blogs or electronic portfolios to create a virtual extension of my classroom. When I first found out about his work through Stephen Downes‘ seminal article on blogging, I knew that my research had to revolve around eportfolios and blogs. It will be good to chat with him about blogs and the work he’s been doing since.

Finally, I’m looking forward to EduCon because it will take place inside a school, not at some posh convention centre. In other words, we will interact in the very spaces where learning takes place, in spaces where students interact on a daily basis. If our work revolves around classrooms, then talking about what we do shouldn’t take place away from them unless absolutely necessary. Thanks, Chris, for bringing us together in an environment designed for interactions and learning, not just public speaking and passive reception.

I mention interactions because the Science Leadership Academy has been designed with interactions - with meaningful interactions - in mind. That is one of the biggest reasons why I can’t wait to see the school. According to DesignShare, the Science Learning Academy has been described as “one of the only examples of School 2.0 in the United States (and beyond).” It is a place where “the school’s founder and the architects tried to make the renovated space [converted office building in an urban context] come to life to support a truly new way of embedding technology into the lives of their students/teachers.”

This is especially important to me because, when I first started teaching, I was given a classroom with no windows and a malfunctioning air conditioning unit. Needless to say, we ventured out of that classroom on a regular basis and, at the very beginning of my career, I found myself having classes in hallways, the courtyard, in the gym, and on the soccer field. At first, I looked at it as an unnecessary disruption, a nuisance, and envied teachers who had classrooms with windows and proper ventilation. But, as time went on, I began to realize that leaving the classroom was often the best thing to be done. These experiences led me to believe that the four confining walls can be very conducive to delivering lectures, but not always to meaningful interactions. Ever since, I’ve been very interested in classroom design and my interest in creating virtual environments for learning stems from my early teaching experiences outside of the classroom.

So, when I first found out about EduCon, I knew that I had to be there to see this innovative learning space and to meet the principal who believes that “the design of a building [can] serve a particular pedagogy” and that “we can create schools where what we do with the information we can access is more important than the information we can memorize” (Lehmann, 2007).

The Science Leadership Academy is a school where the administrative offices, including the Principal’s office, are an integral, transparent, and accessible part of the school:

Because our school’s core principles stress the collaborative and transparent nature embedded in “School 2.0″ thinking, we moved the Principal’s Office to the front of the office suite with a door leading straight into the main hall. Better yet, we wanted no “gate-keeper” guarding access to my office.

From day one, the students and teachers would see my office as their office. Within the overall administrative suite, we made the offices smaller and created space for teachers and administrators and support staff to gather together. The office essentially was designed as community work-space and a dynamic teachers’ lounge all in one (Lehmann, 2007).

In addition, the cafeteria - referred to at the school as “the cafe” - is a place

where students have a really wonderful, well-lit place to eat and hang out and for anyone walking down the sidewalk to see the lives of our students unfolding in real-time. And with that change came a change of name as well. We started calling it the café to attempt to signify the change in mindset the space represented. Every space - including what could have ‘just’ been a cafeteria - would be re-imagined as dynamic, collaborative, and public spaces that echoed what SLA and “School 2.0″ stand for (Lehmann, 2007).

I am also really interested in seeing the school’s presentation spaces, classrooms, and the hallway “streetscapes,” all of which are designed as spaces where students can move around, engage in creative processes, and where explanation, instruction, as well as hands-on, and creative work can all co-exist.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to walk the halls of the Science Leadership Academy and interact with its staff and students.

See you there!

__________________________
References:

Lehmann, C. (2007). DesignShare: “Designing School 2.0: A Study of Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy”. Retrieved November 9, 2007, from
http://www.designshare.com/index.php/articles/science-leadership-academy/

EduCon 2.0 in Second Life

If you’re not a Second Life user, you can still see what the space looks like by viewing these pictures or a short video.

I intend to use this space to host a couple of informal conversations on teacher professional development (details to follow) to complement my session at EduCon 2.0. However, the space is open to all EduCon 2.0 attendees (physical and virtual). If you’re interested in using the space to have your work/ideas showcased in Second Life, or in facilitating a chat sometime before, during, or after the conference, please let me know. I would be more than happy to assist you in any way I can.

Don’t forget that Second Life is not the only virtual venue for EduCon 2.0. Ustream channels have been setup for all sessions.

If you are interested in following the discussion and interacting with teachers who, very soon, will be integrating technology into their subject areas in their own classrooms, please join us by responding to the questions, my own answers, or the comments left by the students. I hope that you will jump in and join the discussion, either here or by posting a response on your own blog. I want the students from Brigham Young to see that the edublogosphere is a varied and rich network. So, if you are a librarian, a high school teacher, an elementary teacher, or an administrator, please join me in this collaborative and mutually-enriching exercise in professional development. If you choose to express your views on your own blog, please use the following tag to make it easier for all of us to keep track of this discussion: BYUPD07.

So, let’s begin!

First of all, I’d like to thank the students from Brigham Young and their instructor for the opportunity to engage in this discussion. Those of us who have been blogging with our students or using other interactive tools often begin to live in a sort of bubble and forget that our first steps were often very hesitant. The questions you sent reminded me that meaningful integration of technology can be a challenging task - one that is often dominated by technical and Internet safety concerns, as well as the need to conform to institutional pressures at the school or district level. In other words, as I looked at the questions I remembered all the obstacles that I had to overcome when I first started thinking of creating a blogging community in my classroom. Now, I realize that while learning from other teachers is an important part of this process, implementing technology in my own classroom is a process that requires a lot of personal reflection. It’s a great opportunity to engage in some informal action research, learn more about myself, and the nature of my classroom practice. In other words, there is no clear, simple answer to any of the questions that you sent me. They are, however, great conversation starters. I hope that you will engage in a discussion here on this blog and that other readers of this blog will join us as we explore the issues you are interested in.

In this entry, I’d like to address your question on the set curriculum:

What are your feelings on a set curriculum? Do you believe we as teachers, and as human beings should have more freedom to be able to study and teach things that are important and that interest us, such as human rights abuses? What is the limit of going outside the curriculum? Is there such a limit?

Prior to researching and using a blogging community in my classroom I never had a problem with a set curriculum. I never even questioned it. It seemed logical to me that my responsibility as an educator was to prepare a collection of texts, resources, diagnostic and assessment/evaluation tools in order to achieve specific learning outcomes. I saw myself as a subject expert whose primary responsibility in the classroom was to teach a very specific set of skills and competencies. I saw myself as someone who possessed knowledge and perceived my students as individuals who needed to acquire it.

Then, one day, in my grade 12 English class, Julia came up to me after class and said:

“Mr.Glogowski, could you please take a look at my essay before I hand it in? I just wanna make sure that it’s ok.”

The essay was due at the end of that day. Julia was a conscientious student and thought that asking me to proofread it would give her another chance to revise her work, if necessary, and then hand it in in the afternoon.

I said, “Sure, let’s take a look.”

I skimmed her work and saw that it was well organized and supported with lots of specific examples from a variety of secondary sources. Julia wrote about the AIDS crisis in Africa and seemed to have a solid grasp of the topic.

“This looks great!” I said. “You can hand it in now. No need to wait till this afternoon.”

“Thank you. But could you take a good look? You see, I’m worried about little careless mistakes … you know they’re never really serious but they do add up.”

“Julia,” I said, “you’ve written essays in the past. You’re a good writer … I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

“But … could you just take a good look at the thesis statement and the hook? Also, I’m not sure my supporting sentences flow very well. The conclusion took me hours to write … now it seems forced.”

I skimmed through her work again, this time focusing on the specific parts that she was unsure about.

“No, I don’t see any major weaknesses here … I’m sure you’ll do well.”

“Thanks … but … will this get me 89%?”

“Why 89%?” I asked, puzzled.

“I need 89% on this assignment to get into Queen’s.”

That’s when I realized that, to Julia - one of the best students in my class, one of the best writers - writing was really only about getting a grade. It had no other meaning or purpose. All of her learning was reduced to one thing - the need to achieve a certain average.

Of course, the whole system is based on evaluation. It wasn’t just my classroom and my methodology that transformed Julia into an average-calculating automaton. Yet, as I was driving home that day, I thought, “She did not engage with her topic at all. She wrote about human rights in Africa and yet she didn’t really seem to care about the issues she had researched. Instead, all she cared about was her average. Writing that paper was a means to an end. It certainly was not an opportunity to engage with a topic, to engage as a human being.”

I realized that my classroom was a place where there was a lot of teaching going on, but not a lot of learning. When talking to me about her work, Julia had used an adopted voice. She spoke about the thesis statement, the hook, about effective support. She used the terminology that I had been using since the beginning of the school year. She realized that school is about “playing school,” that as long as she could jump through all of my hoops, she would do well and get into the university of her choice. My class was reduced to an obstacle course. She knew that writing a good paper was about learning how to produce the right reactions in its evaluator - her teacher. That’s why she asked about specific parts of the essay - the introduction, conclusion, specific supporting ideas - things that were part of my set curriculum. What she produced was an example of “school writing.” It was voiceless and generic, written to demonstrate that she had acquired a skill but devoid of any personal meaning.

And so, the problem with a set curriculum, regardless of the subject, is that it makes us focus almost exclusively on teaching. It makes us think that the most important person in the classroom is the teacher. It is based on the assumption that we know all and that the students know very little.

Should we have the freedom to study and teach things that are important to us as human beings? Absolutely. What is even more important is that we create environments in our classrooms where the students can explore issues that are important to them. Of course, they do need to know how to write an essay or organize a written response - I believe that it is my responsibility to help them learn how to best express their thoughts. But I also believe that it is my responsibility to help them learn how to express themselves in more than one medium and to support them as they engage in this process. In every subject, there is a set of skills and competencies that the children should learn, but we often believe that they must be taught in specific, pre-defined ways.

After that brief conversation with Julia, I realized that I had pre-defined all of her learning. I reduced English and writing to topic sentences and proper organization. No wonder then that Julia’s topic was not as important to her as the technical aspects of her writing. As a teacher, I had completely neglected her growth as a human being and focused instead on peddling pre-selected content. Of course, I should be proud of the fact that I had, after all, taught her a great deal about writing essays. But, at the same time, I wish that I had done it in an environment where knowledge was not presented as a static product to be absorbed. Imagine how much more competent she could have become as a writer if she had been given the opportunity to arrive at the importance of solid support as a result of trial and error, peer editing, and in the context of her own journey as a budding writer. Instead, she acquired the skills through automatic drills. In other words, I wish I had taught those skills in an environment where she could also explore her own passions and grow as a human being.

This brings me to John Dewey and his notion of experience. In Experience and Education, Dewey argues that amid all uncertainties in education “there is one permanent frame of reference: namely, the organic connection between education and personal experience.” He goes on to say that:

There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that the acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials.

and

What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his own soul; loses his appreciation of things worth while, of the values to which these things are relative; if he loses the desire to apply what he has learned and, above all, loses the ability to extract meaning from his future experiences as they occur?

In other words, Dewey argues that no subject has inherent educational value. It is the interaction between the individual and the subject matter that makes the experience “educative” and that our job as educators is to ensure that the environment in which learning takes place allows learners to interact with the subject matter. He argues that “educative experiences” must “arouse in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”

The environment in which Julia wrote her essay did not provide opportunities for interaction between the learner and the subject matter. The skills she had learned were removed from any meaningful context. They were neatly pre-packaged and delivered. As a result, her learning stopped once she finished the paper. There was nothing to motivate her to keep exploring her topic of the AIDS crisis in Africa. Dewey would have said that since no experience has an inherent value, I erred when I selected experiences ahead of time for my students and neglected to create an environment where personally relevant interactions could take place.

Julia taught me that my classroom needs to be first and foremost an inclusive and welcoming environment that encourages exploration and knowledge-building. It needs to be a place where students can engage as individuals. In this kind of environment students can learn through personally meaningful experiences which engage them in what Dewey calls “an active quest for information and for production of new ideas.” This cannot happen if the curriculum is pre-selected for the students. If the experiences they are to have in the classroom are pre-defined ahead of time, the opportunities for meaningful involvement are greatly reduced.

Unfortunately, such an environment is not easy to create. First, because it must be co-created with the students. It must take into account their interests and goals. Second, because it dethrones the teacher and forces us to assume the role of a facilitator or a co-contributor. It requires that we participate as human beings and not just content experts. It requires that we engage in learning with our students.

I’ve been trying to create that environment in my classroom for the past two years. I cannot say that I’ve succeeded or that everything I do always works out. I can say, however, that I have learned a lot from these attempts to create an engaging and participatory environment, and that they have tremendously affected my classroom practice. That’s all it really takes … finding in ourselves the courage to admit openly that we enter our classrooms every day not just to teach but also - perhaps primarily - to learn.

What I am really concerned about, however, is my own voice. For the past three years, my three successive grade eight classes enjoyed blogging and created successful and engaging blogging communities. Most of the time, this development took place without me. While I certainly encouraged my bloggers, discussed their work in class, and posted comments to involve my students in instructional conversations, I have always been absent as a person. This year, I want things to be different.

This year, I want my personal voice to be present in the community. I will, of course, continue to be present as Mr.Glogowski, the grade eight Language Arts teacher. I will be present in my didactic and supportive role of an educator, of a classroom teacher who guides and explains. At the same time, I want to be present as Konrad Glogowski, the human being who has his own interests and views. I want to be present as an individual, not an individual reduced to one role.

In other words, I want the students to see me as yet another blogger in their community, as someone whose reason for being there is not only to support and instruct but also to learn. To learn from and with my students.

My own blog in our class blogosphere has always been used to post updates, assignments, commentary on student work, and words of encouragement. For years, it was called “The Language Arts Blog,” or “Mr. Glogowski’s Blog” or something equally official and unimaginative. The name of my blog has always reflected my one-dimensional presence in the community - the voice of a teacher. I don’t think my students ever perceived it as a blog - a place where the author shares his thoughts, ideas, or experiences and engages in meaning-making. It was a place that my students would visit regularly to read their latest assignment or download a rubric. I don’t think they ever learned anything from my own blog. They learned from the instructional conversations that I engaged with them on their own blogs, but certainly not from my own blog in the class blogosphere. It has always been an uninspiring place, a kind of online bulletin board.

Last year, I started experimenting by posting entries that reflected my own interests. However, I always made sure that they also related to the curriculum. When we read and discussed Animal Farm, for example, I posted some links to articles on totalitarian leaders or on the fragile nature of democracy in developing nations. There needed to be, it seemed to me, a clear link between what we were reading in class and what the students saw on my blog. Everything that I posted on my blog was designed to cultivate an adopted persona and to fit within the confines of the curriculum.

This year, I want to move beyond blogging only about course-related topics. I want my students to see what I am interested in, what makes me mad, what fascinates me, what I write like when I write as someone other than Mr.Glogowski, the Language Arts teacher. In short, I want to be myself and am beginning to take small steps towards this goal.

I started by giving my blog a different name. The titles I used before were too official, too limiting, too school-like. They were institutional and impersonal. This year, the title of my blog is “…looking at things for a long time.” It comes from a quote by Vincent Van Gogh, which, in its entirety, reads: “It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding.” I chose it because I feel that it represents who I am as a person and a teacher. I chose it because I believe that the habit Van Gogh recommends in this quote is something that I want my students to develop as well. I want them to be critical, attentive readers and thinkers. I want them to take the time to achieve that “deeper understanding.”

I also chose an avatar. I chose the picture of the fern globe suspended above the Civic Square in Wellington, New Zealand that I took last year (almost exactly a year ago) while participating in the FLNW unconference. It represents one of the most inspiring experiences in my life as an educator and researcher. It also, as a globe, represents unity and peace - values that are important to me as a human being and educator.

In addition to using an avatar, I also used the “About Me” feature of my blog to post a paragraph that explains my reasons for choosing the title and the avatar. My students need to know the reasons behind these decisions - they will provide them with an important glimpse into my personality. They will help them see me as more than just their Language Arts teacher.

The “About Me” page of my blog also contains two quotes that represent my views on writing:

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
- Thomas Mann

“Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.”
- John Ruskin

I also uploaded my own background image to further personalize my blog. It is no longer just a virtual class bulletin board. It’s becoming a place that reflects the values and interests of its owner:

Of course, these visual changes, while important, are not sufficient to transform my blog into a personal online space. Blogs, after all, are defined by writing, and not merely their appearance. So, this morning, I posted my first personal entry. I wrote about an article on the recent protests in Myanmar and commented on the treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been held under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years. I also linked to a call to action video recorded by Jim Carrey. The post has little to do with what we are currently studying in class. I wrote about it because it moved me as a human being. I posted it on my personal blog in the class blogosphere because I want my students to understand who I am as a human being. Why? Mostly because that human being will walk into their classroom tomorrow. If we are to be a community of learners, we need to know each other as individuals, not people who, for six hours every day, play assigned roles.

In other words, I don’t believe teachers should engage in self-censorship. If we do, then our students end up interacting with an automaton, an actor performing a role. Our schools, administrators, and classrooms cannot demand that the richness that makes us human be stripped down because the students are only fourteen, for example, and should not read about human rights abuses, or because time in class should be used only to study the curriculum.

Tomorrow, I will post an entry about a book I started reading last week. It is entitled 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa. It does not relate to our grade eight curriculum. It does, however, reflect my interest in social justice and I will blog about it every time I finish a chapter or two because that is how I learn, that is how I interact with things that I find important. So, I’m beginning to use my blog to define myself as more than a classroom teacher. Mr. Glogowski, the teacher, is an important part of my life, but it should not exclude other aspects of what makes me who I am.

So, fairly soon, my students will see that I am more than my role as a Language Arts teacher suggests. They will see that I am a teacher who is also interested in social justice, foreign affairs, and human rights. They will see that I am a teacher who is also interested in photography and who collects old books and maps. They will get many glimpses into my life. I hope that they will understand that what makes a community is a network of human beings who have the freedom to be who they truly are and whose richness enhances the value of the community they inhabit.

If education is essentially a social process, then the teacher needs to be part of the learning community, not only as its facilitator but also as one of its members. When students are part of a learning community, a blog titled “Mr.Glogowski’s Blog” will stick out and suggest that the community is really a school-sanctioned place where Mr. Glogowski presides because he has already learned all there is to know about his subject. I do not know all there is to know. I use Web 2.0 to expand my knowledge and to engage in meaning-making. I want to be connected to the class community as a learner. I want my students to see how I engage in negotiating meaning.

I have taken the steps I described above because I believe that a teacher’s blog needs to be a personal space. It needs to be a place where I become visible as an individual and where my experiences - joys, disappointments, struggles, successes, moments of inspiration and epiphany - are shared with the community. It needs to be a place of authentic personal attempts at meaning-making, a place where I engage as Konrad Glogowski and not only as Mr.Glogowski, the content expert.

In her preface to Teaching Community, bell hooks argues that her book “offers practical wisdom about what we do and can continue to do to make the classroom a place that is life-sustaining and mind-expanding, a place of liberating mutuality where teacher and student together work in partnership.” There can be no true partnership in a classroom where the teacher can hide behind an adopted persona while students are encouraged to be individual learners and bloggers. We cannot expect students to engage as individuals, to blog as human beings, to share their experiences, passions, interests, and struggles if, as teachers, we are not willing to do the same.

And so, my inspiration for the coming weeks comes from Teaching to Transgress where bell hooks states:

When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging others to take risks. Professors who expect students to share confessional narratives but who are themselves unwilling to share are exercising power in a manner that could be coercive. In my classrooms, I do not expect students to take any risks that I would not take, to share in any way that I would not share. When professors bring narratives of their experiences into classroom discussions it eliminates the possibility that we can function as all-knowing, silent interrogators. It is often productive if professors take the first risk, linking confessional narratives to academic discussions so as to show how experience can illuminate and enhance our understanding of academic material. But most professors must practice being vulnerable in the classroom, being wholly present in mind, body, and spirit.

The title of my presentation comes from a concept devised by an American urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg. My research on his work led me to an organization called Project for Public Spaces, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating public spaces and communities. Their diagram of the key attributes of great public spaces inspired me to try to relate their work to my experiences online.

Over the years, I have noticed that the online community that I build with my grade eight students every year often resembles a third place. I decided to investigate what contributes to this recurring development. I discovered that starting with the right foundations, ensuring that certain features and freedoms are in place before learning begins, can have a strong impact on the development of a classroom community and its potential movement away from what Oldenburg calls “second place” (a place of work) and towards a third place - an informal meeting place that can facilitate and support creative interaction.

This presentation is my attempt to explain how the right foundations can contribute to the emergence of a community that displays at least some characteristics of a third place.

(If you’re interested in the concept of third places, I highly recommend Teemu Arina’s presentation, Serendipity 2.0: Missing Third Places of Learning.)