First steps.

A year ago I was writing my first post for a "wolweek", I entitled it "La Vie Active" .

It speaks of my work as a English language teacher in higher education in France and my attempts to open up the classroom and to connect learners to people with whom they can share an affinity.

This year again, a few of the students are taking up the challenge and making first steps in blogging in a foreign language.  For some of them this requires considerable courage. Writing in English, blogging, connecting over social networks with people they have never met in countries they have never visited, is not easy.

So this is my purpose during this week, to see if I can help students like Mael, Antoine and Maxime to engage in a process of learning out loud, of working out loud.

They are already doing this here in Clermont Ferrand in their associative work with Manastaps, creating events in the community - The Bougnat Street Festival for urban sports/music, a Salon to connect students with professionals working in the Sports field in companies like Modugames, Oxytis, in banks, in shops like IKEA, in humanitarian action, in education, in high level sport, with people in disability.  I have taken great pleasure seeing how ex-students adapt, create, innovate, manage, care in their communities.

I collect their stories in interviews and share them on Youtube for future generations:

#CLAVSTORIES

I develop networks of people who can help students with their English, with their professional development.

This is my purpose again  this year for the #wolweek to give encouragement and to attempt to connect students to communities of practice, to a way of working openly, to be generous, to network widely, to realise that if they think their ideas are obvious to them, they perhaps underestimate how amazing they can be to others.

I have myself benefited amazingly from learning, working outloud.

I would like to share with the #wol community here the work of Alan Levine @cogdog who has constituted a truly amazing collection of stories of connection.

TRUE STORIES OF OPEN SHARING 

So let me introduce one or two of my amazing students:

Maxime  Otmani
@MaximeOtmani 
who is blogging here http://maxmyfourseasons.blogspot.fr/

Mael Troutouin
@maelitoT 
who is blogging for the first time here http://maeltrotouin.blogspot.fr

Antoine Ratinier
@Ratinier_A
who is blogging for the first time here http://antoinesblogger.blogspot.fr/


I will add to this list as they open up to this community...

Charlène Duquet

who is blogging here: http://charlenestrategy.blogspot.com/

Gregoire Billouet

who is blogging for the first time here: http://gb423006.wixsite.com/gregoire-billouet/blog-1

Nicolas Souques
@RahjinSioux 

who blogs here: https://rahjinswarriorspath.wordpress.com

Here is a bundle of RSS feeds from their blogs:

http://www.inoreader.com/bundle/0014cd6387e5

I think back to my first steps in this blog, entitled "To boldy go."

"I was 19, I was happy,  wasn't sure where I was going.  Not much has changed in thirty years!

This is the first and perhaps the last entry in this log."

I have greatly benefited from meeting people along the way who have helped me out.

We are never quite sure where our paths will lead. 

I am convinced that the more we give the more we may receive. That is my interest in the #wol movement.

Have a thought for those who are just stepping out and offer them a friendly sign, a comment of encouragement, a piece of advice, an article they might find of interest.

You never know how being attentive to another person may change that person's day, year, life.

Deepest regrets...

I still have this.

I sent it to my friend Terry.








It represents regret.

At the time it was an expression of romantic regret.

Looking at it now, I can see that it also speaks to me of educational regret.

Regret that we put teachers and lessons and kids in little boxes.

Regret that we ask kids to choose 'subjects' so that they may become useful objects.

"Oh he's a square peg in a round hole..."

"What are you going to do for 'A' levels, What you going to do at university?"

Ad infinitum.

"Well if you want a job, you shouldn't do art." 
"Nobody makes a career out of art." 
"Well, if you want a job, you shouldn't do theatre."
 "Nobody makes a career out of theatre..." 

Ad infinitum.

We talk of jobs, of careers when we might be speaking about purpose.

There was a song Regrets written and performed in the classroom by Etienne and Loic here:

Over a week the song, shared on Youtube and Twitter, became a transmedia remix thanks to Kevin, Ron, Maha, Bryan and Terry here in his post 'Regrets.'
http://impedagogy.com/wp/blog/2015/11/29/regrets/

Maha wondered about the ethics of remixing Etienne and Loic's song in her blog:

'Here's a gift now wait while we party.'
http://alwayslearning-maha.blogspot.com.eg/2015/11/reflections-gift-followed-by-closed-door.html

Kevin responded with:
'The song is theirs not ours.'
http://dogtrax.edublogs.org/2015/11/30/digiwrimo-reflection-the-song-is-theirs-not-ours/


One of the images in Terry's Z33ga was this one:

I was reading John Stepper's book this morning "Working out loud" and was introduced to Amanda Palmer's TED talk here:

Amanda Palmer talks of her art as a gift of herself, she talks of inviting others to participate in her art.

She talks of the vulnerability of the artist who stretches out to others...

I thought of the gifts in play here.

The gift of the opportunity to play music in English and get graded on it.
The gift of the song and the performance.
The gift of those who listened and gave of themselves to remix the song.
The gift of those who thought about the ethics of sharing, of remixing, of invitation...
The gift of those who introduced me to Working out Loud.
The gift of the author of the book Workign out Loud.

I thought about the music business, the education business and decided that we do indeed have ethical questions to raise.

Are kids to be reduced to numbers in international league tables for maths?

Do we have international league tables for guitar playing or art?

Is Shanghai doing well on drawing, on creativity?

I went to find the source of the statistics which appeared in Terry's Z33ga and I found it here in this article:
"What we regret most and why"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394712/#!po=7.67045

I come back to that top regret - that of education.


I wonder what I might have gained if others around the world had paid attention to my drawing, my writing, my acting at an early age.

I wonder what I might have gained had I been invited to communicate with passionate artists, writers, actors at an early age.

I thought of High Tech High.

I wonder what I might have gained if had been encouraged more to follow my passions rather than worry about 'subjects' to get into 'university'.

I consider myself lucky.

I was able to follow my path without pressure from parents wherever it would lead me.

I remember meeting a top marketing manager who told me how he hated his job, his existence despite the expensive car, the big salary.

I don't have those regrets.

I did have great teachers who encouraged me in acting, writing, art.

I do remember the frustration of my art teacher who asked me why I was giving up art.

I remember telling him that I had been told that it was not a serious subject, that it wouldn't get me a good job....

I remembered tweeting a passage of "Working out Loud" and a question to John Stepper

via @johnstepper Q. What is the cost of disengaged students? #wolweek #wol pic.twitter.com/mxoqPJi3Lz

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 27, 2015

 I wondered what regrets you had about education...

Walking out loud...

This is a fragment of a doodle, a much larger doodle.

 After a week of emotion, connection, experience, I had many ideas buzzing. I had to get it all down on paper. This is one of what will be a series of posts which I shall attempt to write to make sense of this larger doodle.

I have a great deal of thinking to do.

I have a great deal of working through, of walking through to do...

It was a week of walking out loud, which started with a need to get out of the classroom box.

After the flood of emotions resulting from the Paris attacks, by the time I got to Thursday, I felt exhausted.

I am pretty sure that this line of Maxime's post "L'homme libre" had made a click in my head.

"Fermez vos ordinateurs, allez courir, allez rire, serrez vos proches dans vos bras, envoyez un message d'amour."
("Close your computers, go and run, go and laugh, hold those close to you in your arms, send a message of love.")

I suggest to the group who had arrived for a class that we go outside, that we feel the sun on our backs, the wind on a our skin, that we should walk and speak together.

They were a little surprised at the idea, but they agreed, packed up their bags and we left for a rambling tour of the campus plateau.





We spoke together in little groups, sometimes coming together to look at the surrounding landscape, a flower, a landmark on the horizon. We shared photos of where we were from, we spoke of the time that we spent in classroom boxes. We visited regions through the eyes of others, through the words of others unknown to us. We spoke of imaginary friends...

On coming back to the classroom, we sat down and each wrote or drew his impressions of the time that we had spent together.

This week we are to collect our fragments together to reflect our different experiences of walking out loud.

Distant connections?

I met Tanya Lau from Australia during Rhizo14, we have worked and played together intermittently since then.

It is difficult for me now to disconnect my trail through the various hashtag communities that I have journeyed. At one stage, I don't remember when, Tanya introduced me to her friend Bruno Winck. Over a series of tweeted conversations, and to cut a Storifed version of the circumstances of our meeting short, we met last Friday, in the flesh.

It is this which is surreal, really: here was a person who I knew little of a month ago, who perhaps a few months before I had suggested meeting (because I learnt he lived in the same region as I) for a walk, now standing in this same classroom in which I am writing now.

This is a fragment of a photo, a much bigger photo.

All of this resulted from a spark of inspiration, a reversal of a position and the acceptance of an invitation from the faciliators of #digiwrimo to contribute a piece.  I had thought (as often) that I would really not have the time to participate in #digiwrimo, like I had thought that I wouldn't have the time to participate in #rhizo14, #clmooc, #ccourses, #rhizo15...

So here I was actively participating in #digiwrimo and Bruno suggests that I involve some of my students with #wolweek.

What the hell was #wolweek I asked?

A few days later, not really knowing what might happen, I managed to get a group of students to blog every day for a week.

They had pretty much never blogged before...

Not only did they blog, but one or two of them also started making connections with people participating in #wolweek...

This is the moment when lessons learnt from Laura Gibbs during #ccourses came to the fore.

I curated all the student blogs into Inoreader. 

So there he was, Bruno Winck, standing in my classroom.

Very quickly he had gathered students around him and they were listening to him explain networking on Twitter, innovation,  MOOCs...

As he spoke, I was myself beginning to learn a little about him, this person who had appeared from a Twitter stream....

We went for a meal afterwards, our conversation flowed from one theme to another, pretty much uninterrupted, apart from by the four courses of the meal.

We left the restaurant to walk a little way up Ceyrat gorge, one of my favourite local promenades.

It is the background image to my Twitter profile. 

Conversation continued upstream and downstream.

On getting back home, the following morning I found no other means to try to make sense of it all than to doodle.

As I was scrolling through my photos over the past couple years, I was struck by the diversity of people met, experiences had, places visited, connections made.

I see that this connected world maybe digitally connected but it is physically enacted, emotionally embodied...

I thought back to Maxime's lines:

"Fermez vos ordinateurs, allez courir, allez rire, serrez vos proches dans vos bras, envoyez un message d'amour."

Meadow

You never quite know what will pop up.

Wild flowers scatter seeds around the meadow.

Some are carried by animals others by the wind...

A little while later, you discover that some of them have fallen in fertile ground.

As you study the different species and take soil samples, note the season, the humidity, you start to see patterns.

What is apparently chaotic, haphazard, is not.

Chaos has order...of sorts.

If learning is a mechanism (a word which I think is inapplicable to the natural world) then this is how it can be observed.


I have witnessed some examples over the past few days.

I asked my students to create tutorial videos last year.

One of the students, Maxence http://cordomac.blogspot.fr made a rock-climbing video with his friend Romain.

It suddenly and quite unexpectedly popped up in a Twitter conversation between somebody in Australia and someone in France.

@MichelleOckers @sensor63 @cordo_mac did one nice https://t.co/IcIcGmDmbK I learned something, never too late :)

— Bruno Winck (@brunowinck) November 15, 2015

That work which had been done a year before suddenly had popped up.

A conversation with an ex-student the year before had led to him coming to participate in class. I have learnt to capture instants so that others may benefit from them at another moment.

I videoed a conversation in French.

As I had the video, I posted it into a a document for students in the Sports Management class.  Now most people would say that if you want people to make progress in English you only have documents in English. Counterintuitively the French video sparked English writing.

Here, in Sylvain's blog http://sylvainben.blogspot.fr/2015/11/the-diversity-of-job-opportunities-in.html, he responds to the video which captured his attention his reflection written in English.

I comment on the blog, giving him the link to the video, now on Youtube, to enable him to reflect on using diversified media in his blog. His blog added to the video, enriched by comments by myself and Bruno Winck now becomes a powerful tool to demonstrate a simple principle.

What counts for me, is not 'content' per se, but people who share personal or personally sourced resources with others

A book as Dave Cormier would say is a stupid person who can no longer interact. 

Appropriately, unexpectedly the concept of rhizomatic learning pops up here.

Learning in open networks is messy and challenging.

Learners need to develop 'crap detection' skills

Learners need to understand the importance of networking with people to find mentors and experts and friends.

Learners need to learn the importance of sharing their work.

Learners need to learn how to curate.

I found a student, Huseyin who blogged on the question of information overload.
https://huseyinaydinblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/day-1-wolweekchallenge/


I can see now what the next classes will include...

What the hell is going on?

The problem is that it doesn't look like working.

The problem is that it perturbs peoples' ideas of what learning looks like.

The problem is that it isn't linear.




The problem is that it demands learning new skills.

The problem is that it is not controllable.

The problem is that it does not have predictable outcomes.

This is learning.

This is me reflecting on learning process.

This is the outcome of a process which is a process....

Where the hell is this going next?

I am excited to find out.

New people, new encounters, new applications, new experiments, new risks, new adventures...

After a crazy week of connecting, of dialogue, of experiment, of pushing things and myself and probably the students to the edge, I returned to Storify my apparently chaotic work (even to me - and that's saying something).

We need to order, to reflect, to summarise, to digest, to learn....

This is an example of learning out loud...

Thank you all for your part in my learning.

La Vie Active

Nothing would have changed if I hadn't opened the door to my classroom.  

I might have satisfied 'my students' in 'my classroom' and nothing would have changed. 

It is only by working/learning out loud and understanding that the classroom walls are virtual that things have changed.

The majority of the students that we work with have English language skills which are limited by their limited access to English speaking communities. 

If you have family who is connected to English speakers or who has the means to send you on a language exchange your privileges guarantee less limited skills. 

It is a question of access. 

As there is a 'digital divide' so there is a 'linguistic divide'.

If learners already have a network of English language speakers (not especially) natives then this is reflected in their social media networks and also their digital literacies. 

Research carried out for the CLAVIER project demonstrates that the challenge which faces us is to build the bridges between learners and (language) learning communities via afffinities.

The practices of language teachers (as other teachers) in the public sector here in France are largely protected and linked to the interests of institutional deciders, publishers, testers, and education equipment suppliers. 

There are many good reasons for teachers to continue practices which have hardly evolved and where 'new' technology has largely reinforced existing practices of teacher controlled/centred closed classrooms.

Learners are a captive audience for a captive educator, behind 'closed doors.'

Learners may well also be a captive audience for 'individualised learning paths' behind the closed doors of the walled garden of a 'Learning Management System.'

What a teacher does (once the door is closed) may be largely unknown.

Younger teachers (good students) largely reproduce teaching that resulted in them becoming good students encouraged by traditional peer teachers.

Bridging the connection between digital practices in informal learning and in formal learning may well be considered as largely incompatible.

Research into inservice and preservice teachers perceptions of Online Intercultural Exchanges reflect stories of informal learning/formal learning in business and individual experiences of education. 

Learners with innovative teachers remember them.

Teacher centred teaching produces teacher centred teachers.

It is a question of  first "educational culture" and second access to innovative networks.

"Teaching space" architecture often encourages 'closed door policies'.

Research into alternative spaces, research into alternative teaching/learning organisations has resulted in open learning spaces and ,networked enhanced team teaching.

Research into meaningful networked enhanced active learning, have resulted in making global connections which are reflected in transformation of the learning space. 

How do we transform pockets of innovation into wider uptake of innovation?

What can be learnt from studying the 'learning spaces' and practices of the most innovative companies?

Working out loud, sharing photos of new spaces inspire others...has succeeded in opening a little more than space.

"Networked market-led/PISA innovation"

What a teacher does in some institutions (once the door is closed) is largely his problem until standardised testing of some sort is introduced and a compulsory course book imposed. 

What a teacher does increasingly in many institutions is fill in forms for data retrieval and centralised analysis and control.

American language testing services impose technology specifications to become a recognised tester.

Out go the French keyboards in comes Qwerty.

The language training market is enormous.

A quick Google search brings up astronomical figures: the market is projected to rise $193 billion by 2017.

http://www.ednetinsight.com/news-alerts/voice-from-the-industry/the-global-english-language-learning--ell--market.html

The students that we work with are not necessarily the most connected in terms of network.

The students that we work with are not necessarily going to benefit from foreign language certifications - even if obliged to study for them (unless they become passports to advancement).

Education or protection racket?

The question I ask myself at times is do we want education for our children or a corporate protection racket?

Note references to the research publishing mafia.

"Academic publishers the most profitable obsolete technology in history"
http://sasconfidential.com/2015/11/06/obsolete/

Note response of Steve Wheeler:

"Inspire to learn." 
http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/inspire-to-learn.html

Meanwhile there appears for many of them to be a yawning gap between their 'education' and what they call in France 'La Vie Active' (the rest of their lives).


La vie inactive

I am never quite sure what one might term education - 'La Vie Inactive'?

Work is done largely for a grade. No grade. No work. No grade. No degree. No degree? Anxiety.

Anxiety: what am I going to do next?

Networks are everything.

The challenge is enormous.

The importance of meaningful networked learning can hardly be understated.

As Steve Wheeler says: "Networks are everything."
http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.fr/2015/11/networks-are-everything.html

The unattractiveness of unmeaningful commercial networked teaching and testing can hardly be understated.

Peer support.

A recent interview of an ex-student underlines the challenge.

What students need he says is meaning, and dialogue with their peers and elders.

As, I connect with Working Out Loud via Bruno Winck, as I attempt to connect students struggling with English with Working Out Loud Week #wolweek, I wonder if we face an impossible task to really open up public education.

Will these students take an opportunity to share their learning with a wider network seriously?

Will these students think of it as a reason to pander to the whims of an unrealistic teacher?

Will the other learners be patient with their faltering attempts to communicate their learning?

Will we be able to go a little further to bridge the divide between active more expert learners and those who need their advice, their encouragement, their ideas most - these young students who waiting to enter into what they term 'La Vie Active.'

As I see the classroom open up, as I see more and more students connecting with their peers around the world, I see reasons for hope.

These are our children.

Please help.