At first sight, it is just some scruffy student bag.
Look closer, there might be a story here worth reflecting on, worth sharing.
Freedom branded
A student has taken a cheap, generic back-pack and spent a fair amount of time tatooing the bag with a brand.
Perhaps he/she didn't have enough money to buy an 'authentic' branded bag?
Perhaps he/she is subverting the brand by copying it freely?
The choice of brand is not anodyne, the person is making an identity statement.
He feels he/she belongs with a group who shares a certain life-style, certain aspirations, a certain vision on life.
It might be just a fashion-statement, it might be just a passing fad. I suspect that it is not.
We might find this story a sad indictment of our consumer culture.
We might also connect consumer culture to school?
Whatever the truth in the matter, the person has taken his own time to painstakingly customise his bag...
He is affirming belonging to surf or skate culture.
What are the dreams that marketers manipulate?
What are the fears that school sows?
There is somewhere there in Quicksilver marketing: an affirmation of a desire for freedom, a desire to protect our ecosystem...
I have been working on connecting to learner passions for a good number of years now to harness intrinsic motivation for language learning.
It seems to me that this is a no-brainer particularly in a web-connected environment.
We work from the learner outwards, sharing our expertise, our passions, enhancing competences.
In such an exchange we are all learners.
Passion is communicative.
We gradually connect tribes across boundaries of distance, classroom walls, generations.
I ask learners to leave their mark, to plant a seed, for themselves, for their friends, for future generations.
Such learners are also teachers.
We gradually weave our learning webs. Yesterday, I was speaking with a student, Arthur Rolle, in the class, about paragliding, he spoke of the freedom of being in the air. He was teaching me.
He spoke of his childhood dreams of flying like those that he saw above the Puy de Dome, of flying like a bird...
As part of our curriculum we ask students to create tutorials on video.
The students have clearly made a big effort to not only demonstrate the task of folding a paraglider, they have also been able to communicate enthusiasm, they have worked on the editing of the video.
Once such passions are identified, a whole series of activities - meaningful for the learner might be imagined with them.
Researching the activity from a professional point of view, connecting with other paragliders around the world, weaving webs, building communities around hashtags...#clavoutdoor
Passion tags are a change from school uniforms.
Free models of freedom
I was busy teaching last year, when I suddenly received a message on Facebook from an ex-student, who found himself in Australia.
The message was quite similar to a growing number that I receive. It went something like as follows:
"Dear Simon, how are you? Do you remember me? I am currently going around the world for 6 years and as you introduced us to people in your network to motivate us to learn English and to help us to learn new skills, I would like to do the same for your current students."
This was Julien Diot, an extraordinary, inspirational globe-trotter who is currently in Thailand, Laos or... I am not sure where he is today. Here is a photo of a school somewhere.
We catch up on news from time to time and he connects with students via video-conference or via social media.
He is a model of freedom for me...
Little seeds which have been planted may remain dormant for years and then flourish unexpectedly.
Connected courses
Connected Courses, one of the videos on Unit 5, has already sparked off reflection of teachers and learners that I work with. It was one of the shortest videos on the site.
As I am working with educators, and trainee educators around the world, little seeds get spread widely.
This video is starting conversation in Poland, in France...
We are working at connecting with educators in CLAVIER (connected learning and virtual intercultural exchange research) #clavedu, starting small, working from their questions, their silence.
It may not look much for the moment....
It is just another generic Google + Community for the moment...
This reminds me of the discussion that I was having the other day with Alan Levine, Jon Becker et al about seeing the participation or the impact of Connected Courses. It inspired a swarm of a blog post: Little Bird.
They couldn't have seen the conversation that I had yesterday with one of my colleagues, who was really proud to tell me that she was now getting to grips with Google Documents.
This was a major development for her, she added that she was amazed at how her 'digital native' students were much less competent than her.
I suggested to her that such an experience would be great to share with others, maybe via a blog.
I showed her the video from Connected Courses.
Suddenly things seemed to be clicking. She liked the video. She understood that our experiences have resonance for others that can identify with us. A seed has been planted...
I showed her the pictures from Julien Diot of his trip to Australia #clavtravel, she recognised the places - a connection was made. Little signs...
Julien free somewhere
This morning, I received a unexpected tweet from one of my students Maxime Otmani, containing a video he had made. I love surprises. He didn't have to make the video for a class, he did it for pleasure. He didn't have to write a blog. He chose to write a blog. He wrote a post the other day: "The smallest connections can have the largest impact".
I am writing this while 'teaching a class', or should I say modeling learning? The students are self-organising a choir to sing one of their favourite songs 'Get lucky' #clavmuso. Two students have improvised a percussion section (sorry now there are three or four students doing it).
They are going to share a video of their performance with a group of Italians that we are starting to work with in CLAVIER #clavbus community.
There is a buzz. I like buzzes around a learning space...
Oh they have just changed the song, whatever...
Even if they never make the video that I can share with you, I am capturing the moment.
So for those of you who don't follow instruction, here is a brief summary of the aforewritten veritable facts:
Robber robs 16 shops while wearing a criminal #tag. Conclusion; if you want to deter a robber from robbing, the scary idea of being followed around Paris by the Pink Panther sitting in front of his sophisticated control panel ain't working. What went wrong? Hypotheses:
Was Pink asleep each time the suspect was doing his business?
Was Rob using sophisticated microwave blocking device?
Does Pink have a prostate problem which he is finding hard to admit to?
Does Pink listen too much to Europe 1 on the radio and ignore Rob?
Does Pink get paid by Rob?
We shall never know.
Crimewatch didn't investigate.
Meanwhile in the 'Justice Ministry' they're looking at their budgets and tearing their hair out.
Too much crime, too many criminals, too much too young...
Violent crime is on the rise in France.
(Oh GAWD! )
Solution:
Build more prisons.
The problem with prisons is that young offenders who have been sciving school to rob banks, to pay for their dope and Call of Duty fee get the privilege of going to a proper and rather pricy finishing school, called #detention centre.
Brilliant!
Come to #detention centre, you get to meet a selected community of practice (#COP) who will simultaneously alienate you for ever from 'normal society' and give you an apprenticeship in more advanced crime!
back at 'normal' school, teachers and kids are being put in well-designed 'educational boxes' (classrooms, schools), banned from using their mobile phones, social media, watching tv, and told off for looking out of the window or chatting with their mates about their Kill percentage on Call of Duty.
Scandalous!
If you ask me they should increase sensory deprivation and take the solitary confinement (one teacher one classroom) further.
That will stop them imagining, creating, cooperating, innovating, and generally limit all spread of dangerous sedition exemplified by the idea that in a connected world perhaps the idea of shutting up kids in a box for 8 hours a day isn't perhaps the only concept of education imaginable.
Stop and think for a moment.
How would you stop innovation in pedagogy, revolution in China, or kids playing Candy crush in class? Go on, go on... so?
No ideas?
OK, here's mine: You stop people talking to each other, you wear them out so they don't want to speak to other people and basically you try to follow them around while limiting their movement when they go off in the wrong direction.
Government has less money to follow people around and shut them up in boxes.
Solution
Private entreprise see opportunity in following tagged people around, selling the data to other corporations, shutting them in boxes for the....government?
Question. How do people get to be in the government?
They have to raise funds....from? (I have no idea, just asking)
I digress...
So enclosure is for bad people?
You ARE PUNNISHED if you are confined in a box.
You are threatened by being sent to...Coventry (no one speaks to you, or you don't understand the accent)
Or if you are really bad (Denis Rodman - he is so bad - he chose to go) you get sent to.... NORTH KOREA, where they will force you to clap a fat man with an uncool haircut and a mania for serial murder. (scared?) WARNING BOMBS!
Enclosure is for rich people?
They have a problem at the moment, the French government....
Valerie spilled the beans after being serially-jilted.
Merci pour tout, she said - I am sure I detect irony.
No, I am talking about much less serious things...er immigrants. (scary African immigrants, or Afghan, Syrian, (#terrorist) or er the rest.)
The serious things....the immigrant issue is unsolvable....
Rihanna?
No, not Rihanna. You are getting distracted. Stop, read again what I was saying. So we must post more guards around our borders protected with barbed wire fencing and scary dogs. If they don't have enough dogs they could perhaps try #decoy barking over loudspeakers.
I digress. So they up there (God) are having difficulties with all the things, the people, the lack of dogs, the lack of North Koreas, the lack of #terrorists to make you sufficiently scared to want to be in prison or rewards to make you build your own fenced condominium (er behind borders/bars etc).
We need jobs, or a new version of CALL of DUTY to keep the kids off the streets. (scared yet?)
Whatever.
The corporations who do Call of duty and prisons and fences and dog collars are happy, their investors sound.
Bully for them.
What about school?
Well might I be so criminal to suggest that it might need a revamp?
Keeping people in boxes all day is after all expensive.
Prison warders Teachers etc are pricy...they tend to go off on a tangent when you up there have organised a carefully researched educational 'path'. (Fiddlesticks! They are not working how they should???darn! Back to the lab. Where's that inspector when you need him? PINK? PINK?)
We could replace humans with R4DE (robot) or the unpopular amphitheatre drone with a MOOC (x) from Harvard.
Researchers are working on that one.
I digress.
If we want to reimagine education, maybe we should start with a blank sheet of paper.
Questions:
Why do we put 1 person in a box with teenagers playing on banned smartphones?
Why do we try to enclose a Network?
Why are we scared of technology which offers us Wikipedia?
Why are we still thinking in terms of classrooms, regions, and countries when Amazon and Google don't?
Why do we believe in democracy when the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, the wars uglier, the forests enclosed, exploited, the things we find (resources - people we do/don't care about) destroyed?
Have these people got the foggiest idea of what the f*** they are doing? (Yes, I know... don't answer that)
Proposal
We start thinking and educating ourselves in terms of complexity of networks, of chosen tags (or no tags), of emergence, of freedom of association, of respect for diversity, of free movement of ideas, creativity, innovation, justice, empathy, understanding, civic responsibility, planetary responsibility....
Please add your tag....your thoughts, your music, you pictures, your words, in the language and form of your choice on the blank page here
(Should you wish. I have no means of enforcing this. This is not for credit/debt/cash)
