While I can't knock down walls...

After spending a day working with staff at a local state school in Sydney, I received this comment on my blog from a teacher, Natalie Aoun...

“While I can’t knock down walls, I’d like to change the way my classroom looks inside. Can I send you a photo of what my classroom looks like?”

Classroom pre-makeover! 

"While I can't knock down walls, I'd like to change..."  !!!!

I replied and few moments later, Natalie sent my this photo, and some more information...

Natalie also told me her ideas: 

- black painted feature wall for chalk drawing (rather than the pinboards at the back)
- grouped tables
- bean bags/ pillows/ comfy chairs
- floating bookshelves
- 'fan' space (because the girls love their music bands)
- iPod ports for music
- iPad ports for charging, like the way they have it set up in the Apple store (we currently had 3 that were issued to our faculty that are not in use yet)
- fairy lights/ lanterns/ hanging bottles (as suggested by my students in roll call)

In my next reply I put Natalie onto these resources:

Inspiring videos by Ira Socol also here and here. Also the Third Teacher website and video. And blogs by Bianca Hewes and Henrietta Miller and Greg Miyanaga

I mentioned other stuff too, including the idea of using www.freecycle.org where there is a wealth of free stuff being given away by local people.

Before I know it, Natalie has started a blog, AND she's set up two spaces where her students can add ideas, including this virtual "padlet" where her learners contributed to the vision. Scroll down and right to browse through all their ideas: 

Created with Padlet

Where did it go from here? 

Well you'll want to high-tail it over to her blog to see! Here's a sneak peek: 

The blog is a wonderful read - in it you'll find a hilarious conversation with a student starting with "what's the point" and ending with "Omg this is really cool."

And along the way Natalie Aoun is resourceful, creative and proactive. She seeks (and receives) support from the school leadership, gets help from friends outside school, collaborates with the school grounds staff, gets hands-on painting a wall with the students. She puts out word on Facebook and various friends and colleagues get on board.

A transformation takes place!

Grateful that @KYNKgraphics is lending their talent to create a wooden display in our #classroom for student work!

— Natalie Aoun (@spoonofaoun) August 23, 2013

Water on every table!

Where to go with this? 

• first of all, three cheers to Natalie Aoun. Follow her on Twitter, read her blog. What a creative, resourceful, empowered, transformative person!
• from her blog, there is about a gazillion strategies for transforming a space  on a small or zero budget.   Don't tell me what you can't do - Natalie has already done it!
•  'While I can't knock down walls'... what can you do? Plenty!

Natalie's story also illustrates what I've come to see as mission critical in school transformation: Inspiration is a force-multiplier.  

Whereas I keep encountering this assumption over and over again: ???to get transformation we need to give teachers release time???

Why? It seems to be... because they're so exhausted, we can't take ANYTHING MORE on, so we need release time.  

Wrong diagnosis I'm afraid. Why are teachers exhausted? Well, lots of reasons, but release time isn't going to cure it.  

I'm not anti-release time, bring it on, but without inspiration and vision it isn't going to cut the mustard. 

Here are Natalie's words in a recent email to me:

“Hey Steve!

Are the exclamation marks indicative of the mood I am in right now? I hope so! I wrote a proposal last week for the classroom and it just got approved today. I’m so excited! ”

The answer to school transformation does not lie in money or release time, but in vision, inspiration, and resourcefulness.

Why not forward on Natalie's blog to colleagues who might like the inspiration? And if you have a second tip your hat to her on Twitter. 

 P.S. Taxonomy of Frames applied to Natalie's Project:

Note the layers of space involved in her project: physical (furniture, features, etc), virtual (the chalkboard wall), and cultural.

Cultural? Yes because look at the quotes wall: the students themselves have now imprinted messages like "Life stops when you stop dreaming" onto the space itself. It's not just physical & virtual space that will frame their experience from now on, but quite literally the building is clothed in ideas.  

Taxonomy of Frames for Innovation

Here you have it folks, in a 4 minute timelapsed writing + voice narration video. 

Having published a few weeks ago my confidence is growing that this baby is a keeper. It's actually the toolkit of a generalist innovator. "Generalist" sound dull to you? Not me - I am one, proud of it. Study widely different domains and then mash them up.. We can transform education by playing anthropologist, and seeking insights outside the domain. Anyways have a watch - you'll know within seconds if you want to keep going: Read more here, contribute here.

Make Room

Make Room

I have a riddle:

What can you create by taking something away?

- remove tables and chairs...
- remove old displays from walls and windows
- remove the lesson plan
- remove established conventions
- remove the personal histories, and assumptions
- remove goals and expectations
- remove all storage and stored items

Let the clutter fall and a lightness take its place.

You've created a blank slate.

In the clutter, who owned the space? It wasn't the teacher! It sure wasn't the learners.

The space was its own creature, self-perpetuating. The clutter took up the room, vetoing unforeseen discoveries and unrecognised passions.

Now there is room.

Anything could happen. It's a fresh day. It's a new page.

Everything in our field of vision is heavily analysed and processed by our visual cortex and 'adaptive unconscious' - our executive functions are not aware of this, it just gets dished up on a platter... a very full platter.

Those old posters still on the wall are invoking a myriad of tired neural networks, and further, a cascade of associations. It's the weight of the past. The mind uses reference lookup as a default mode, and the process has a hair trigger.

Now you've taken the posters down, and made room. Your visual cortex scans and sees a blank canvas. Subtly the blood flow in your brain shifts to support higher functions; creating the future rather than referencing the past.

An ember-sense of capacity and enlargement grows. The learner feels more receptive and expansive. 

We add back in a few items: liquid chalk for writing on the windows, ordinary chalk for the floor, butcher's paper for the walls.

And we ask: what next? what's on your heart? where shall we go?

Post-Script Vignettes: 

Notes from Frames Taxonomy

Frames are discrete, identifiable, manipulable components of our physical, virtual, mental and cultural contexts. If we don't shape them, they shape us.

- items of furniture are o-frames
- habits, lesson plans, are s-frames
- goals and agendas are n-frames
- our personal histories and sense of established roles are also n-frames

We can create these frames deliberately, but mostly they are just 'spawned' or inherited from the past, and are very often artefacts of our collective neuroses, perpetuating anxiety.

Frames get coded in our the basal ganglia (unquestioned routine) and resisting them can activate the amygdala (fear of social transgression).

Make Room, by Rachel Collis

The notion of 'making space' or 'making room' has become for me a core value in every domain, every situation.

Though your heart's a flickering no-vacancy sign,
Though your heart's forever working overtime,
Though your heart's a suitcase fully packed,
Though your heart's a disregarded artefact -

Love is spacious, love is kind,
So make room. 
Make room.

Though your heart's the city crowds on New Year's Eve,
Though your heart's been struggling for years with no reprieve,
Though your heart's economy class,
Though your heart's perpetually half-mast -

Love is spacious, love is kind,
So make room. 
Make room.

Though the bus is standing room only,
Love's not leaving anyone behind,
So make room.

Though my heart's an insensitive practical joke,
Though you fear I'll strangle you with my yoke,
Though I fight and kick and scratch and scream,

And though I need -

Love is spacious, love is kind,
So make room.

Make room.

For Me at Home 

I try to make room at home, especially room to think/write/draw. 

Today I'm going to order 'aqua notes' that I've been aware of for ages - creating room to write in the shower! Ironically on their website they also have the opposite... pure clutter, in the form of a crossword to do in the shower.  

My love affair with GTD workflow is about finding mental space to be reflective and receptive in the midst of the insane complexity of school life.

In particular, I want to feel like when there is an interruption and someone needs my help or input, I can genuinely make room for them - have a sense of generous, abundant space for them rather than the scarcity of throwaway scraps.

And how much more important is this aspiration when it comes to young learners!

Technology as Magic Dust

It ain't magic dust. And if you construe it as magic dust it will become pure poison.

Have you ever had a conversation around "how to get teachers using technology" or "how can we increase technology integration"? To me, these questions are somewhere between nonsensical and downright hazardous. 

You better watch out if you don't ask some pretty basic questions about technology first. What is this beast? And it is a BEAST.

It is our making, our undoing. We're extended through technology. We make it. It makes us.

Subtle...​

Our joy, our despair, curing diseases & promising hope, lobotomising, alienating, destroying & saving lives via proxy. Amplifying, dissolving. Scaling beyond design specs...

Have you got a philosophy of technology? Metaphysics even? If you like, theology. A robust master system?

Anything other than fish-in-water will do. Fish swim default, get caught.

These words are in your brain, munching on your neurons. How did they get there again? You have information about what I typed at my kitchen table, yet I don't even know who you are. How very asymmetrical. ..

Alice Leung Does Stochastic Tinkering

I noticed Alice Leung tweeting about tinkering with the configuration of her classroom:

There developed a lovely conversation between her and @sarahjohanna :

Now I really resonated with what was going on here  and what I often notice in Alice's tweets: a constant energetic questioning and tinkering, and then reflecting on the results. Apart from anything else, I just want to shout a hearty 'hear hear!' and celebrate the moment.

The exchange also sparked some associations and I've thrown them here below: 

"Stochastic Tinkering"

I picked this lovely phrase up from Nassim Taleb in his books "The Black Swan" and "Antifragile". By stochastic he means random. For me, the word has connotations of deliberate intent to shake things up... staccato stabs at innovation. 

Stochastic tinkering isn't far off notions of edu-hacking. 

Taxonomy of Frames

In my 'frames' taxonomy for innovation, Alice is tinkering with "o-frames" - organisational frames. In this case, they are the physical frames in her learning space, consisting of furniture, empty space, etc, within the broader o-frame of the classroom building itself.

Alice observes that "HS teachers don't really think about learning space layout".  

My aspiration for the 'frames' taxonomy is to expose these arbitrary elements and make them more susceptible to innovation. Alice, of course, does this instinctively.

Frames are for edu-hacking, stochastic tinkering.

Design Thinking  vs Hacking

I've noticed Design Thinking is getting more and more traction in educational circles. Indeed I myself have become rather besotted by it.  I suspect that within a year or two it will have the same horrible simplistic buzz word status as flipped learning, PBL, gamification. 

All these models wander in and out of the edu-zeitgeist.

As much as I love Design Thinking, I wouldn't want it to become a dogma to replace "fly by the seat of your pants" hacking/tinkering.

So much of life, experience, and nature, and everything is composed of ad-hoc tinkering.

Hacking is immediate, contextual, empowered, and subversive! It provides its own research data, because it either works immediately & sticks or it doesn't and doesn't.

A blog post contrasting Design Thinking with hacking is here, with lots of further links.