Run away and join the circus.

What is the atmosphere, (or ambiance!) of your school? For many schools the quest is for order. Teachers come to value order and see it as a litmus test. Like in "Lord of the Flies", young people go feral without adults present to bring structure to their lives.

School is an institution. We have a uniform, rules, and a timetable. We have a very clear hierarchy. And, as I've discussed before, it is interesting to note who the privileged speakers are, both in class and also among the staff.

I am not criticizing school-as-institution. Hospitals are institutions, work places are institutions, and an ability to fall into disciplined line is crucial. Discipline, and pressure, and sharp leadership bring out great things in human nature.

I do not believe in Rousseau's noble savage.

But... what are we missing out on when this is our dominant model? Our measurement of success?

Can you do better than 'well-ordered'? Could we be more ambitious?

School is a community. Hospitals are communities, work places are communities. These operate best when people have a strong sense of belonging and identity, of what they have to offer, and a unifying sense of higher purpose. Whether we think of school as institution or not, they are communities.

What if the atmosphere of a school was 'festive' rather than 'ordered'?

I am thinking of school space as performance space rather than ordered space.

The circus metaphor comes to my mind. A circus is highly ordered, and disciplined, but our cliche image of the traveling circus is one of strong community, personal dedication to the community, a thirst to impress with one's best, a delight in adventure and a delight in constant change.

Think of all the baggage that comes with our image of the circus. Compare that to the baggage that comes with our image of what school is.

There is such a weight of expectation about school and the importance of order. It comes from all of us because we all went to school. Parents, teachers, politicians and children all buy into the BIG IDEA of school. It is portrayed in soap operas and Hollywood films. It is a giant social construction.

Ever want to run away and join the circus?

Research Trip to Europe: Learning Spaces

Over the next fortnight I am very fortunate to be travelling

around Europe investigating learning spaces, with the aim of bringing back

ideas for our own school.

 

We recently opened the SCIL building - http://scil.nsw.edu.au/scil-building/, 

a learning space with no walls, room for 100+ students, and no front.

 

This space will need reframing / refiguring / renewing over

the coming years. It needs to turn into something new, just

like we are constantly turning into someone new. If you stay

still, you stagnate. This is the challenge of schools. So much

baggage in our notions of what ‘schooling’ is.

 

We’re hoping to renew all our school buildings. We’re

getting rid of walls wherever we can.

 

Instead of classrooms, plazas.

 

What language or frameworks could we use to redefine our

learning spaces? I’ve already blogged at length about the classroom as a

stage.

 

Could school become a shopping centre? Students browsing for

lessons? A class as a market? A stock exchange, where the stock are ideas,

rising and falling in the student discourse while alternate perspectives are

considered? A battlefield of ideas?

 

A hospital for the disenfranchised? A playground? A museum?

A laboratory?

 

And by all means, a military academy, where the highest

possible expectations exert pressure on young people to find the best in

themselves. Don’t throw out old-school!

 

I would blabber for longer if I didn’t have to leave

in 10 minutes for the airport!

 

I’ll try to blog whenever I can get a wireless connection

and throw more thoughts together. The itinerary is intense. From Goteborg to

Nordborg, Copenhagen to Paris and London, I’ll post photos and

philosophies here, as we visit learning spaces that AREN’T schools. La

Cité des Sciences. The Creativity Centre. Orested Gymnasium. London

Science Museum...

 

Sorry I have to go now! Follow the adventure on www.twitter.com/steve_collis ,

and subscribe to my blog (see link on right hand side of the page) to receive

reflections, interviews, photos, and so on as we travel.

 

I’d love to hear your own thoughts in the comments

section, especially about the assumptions, images, and language we have about

what learning spaces even ARE!

Technology for Language Learning

My friend Andrew, (www.twitter.com/ajep) has organised a language teacher meetup that I can't attend, so I threw together a quick video message giving a very brief overview of how technology impacts the language learning happening in the High School section of our school. In the video, I show how we use the Moodle Learning Management System, blogging and wikis, and our 3D virtual world.

Our Student Podcast is now on iTunes

Many of you will be aware of our 'internet radio station' that we've been running for the last year or so. 

You can read in other posts about how we create MP3 files and then upload them to what's called a 'Shoutcast' server on the internet, where they are played as a playlist on repeat for anyone to tune into live. You can listen now live in this fashion - go to http://learn.nbcs.nsw.edu.au and click on the BooralieFM image. You may need to copy the link address, then go to iTunes and click "open url". 

But recently I've figured out how to turn those MP3s into a coherent podcast that is actually visible in iTunes and available for automatic download to your iPod or MP3 player!

 

 

This has coincided with a new team of students who have taken on the project and basically run the podcast themselves. I've been steering them, and plugging a couple of gaps, but am trying stand off as far as I possibly can.

They roam the school at various times, attend events, visit classes, visit performances, and then edit the sound and create segments in the podcast using Audacity. 

I'd like to invite you to subscribe, if you're interested. If you go iTunes and search for "BooralieFM" you'll find us.

Or, click here to see the 'feed' of our podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Booraliefm

Subscribe in a reader

I was amazed 5 minutes ago to see we already have 21 subscribers, just because I've mentioned it on Twitter once or twice.

Anyway, to get your podcast up and running, see instructions here: http://www.podcastingnews.com/articles/Make_Podcast_Blogger.html

First I put the MP3s in order and saved them as one big MP3.

To get iTunes to recognise it, look here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html 

Beyond Borders - a safe web space to share

I launched Beyond Borders back in 2005. In those I was teaching French and English and had no other responsibilities at the school. My Principal told me about an organisation in Europe called WKTO (standing for Work Together). The WKTO network, limited to Northern Hemisphere, used a special web space to facilitate teams of students from various countries operating in one common language (but not their maternal language).

This sounded great for my French students: a web space for them to share with other students in other places where they could communicate and collaborate.

The leaders at my school got behind the idea and set up the IT infrastructure for me. It's great at my school that new ideas and projects are supported strongly. There aren't hoops to jump through, rather a golden path is built!

The pilot project went well in 2005, and I thought "Hey ANY subject could benefit from this model!"

So I swung into action, creating:

- behaviour agreements for students

- tutorial materials for teachers

- a standardised project structure

Funding from the government via a special language innovations program was very helpful. The standardised project structure I called "Collabor8" and am still really pleased with it. Conceptually it adapts to any age and any subject.

 

I also started presenting on the website at conferences. My lovely awards were for Beyond Borders and this opened a lot of doors to get the word out.

We actually have 3,616 users registered now! Projects have run in all kinds of different languages with participants from lots of different countries.

 

With everything else I'm trying to do, Beyond Borders is quieter now than it used to be, but it is still very much available. 

One thing I have learnt is that a lot of teachers will say "Yes! I will participate!" but literally only about 5% follow through, no matter how sure they were initially. This has everything to do with how busy they are, and I completely understand. I have, however, started holding back from registering teachers until I am sure they're going to follow through. Actually, I try to put barriers in people's way so I can avoid doing all the administration only to have schools drop out!!

Anyway the catalyst for blogging on this is that I am running full day training on Beyond Borders on September the 16th at my school in Sydney. We'll canvass a wide variety of ideas for using the website, everything hands-on and practical, of course! If you're keen to attend, grab the rego form from http://scil.nsw.edu.au/pd/ and send it in.

If you can't attend but want more information on Beyond Borders and the capabilities of the project infrastructure (which uses Moodle, but that's another story), have a look at this manual:

Download Complete Guide to Collabor8

There are plenty of other courses coming up too!

Actually, if you're interested more generally in Moodle, you'll notice we're running training on the November 2nd. We've had Moodle since 2004 and it is fair to say most our teachers are experts. The guys running this course are the experts of all experts!

Look, while I'm blogging this, let me finish with a little announcement! Our Internet radio station, which I presented on at ELH a few days ago, is now available as a podcast. This morning I had no idea how to set up a podcast. It took me about 60 minutes to find the information and tutorials required and follow them until I got it working. 

If you'd like to subscribe, click on the logo below and then click "Add to iTunes" or whatever other system you want to subscribe with! The show is entirely recorded, edited and produced by students! Edit: gosh I listened to the podcast this arvo on the way home and a number of the sections have been repeated. Far from perfect, but at least the ball is rolling!

(Alternatively, listen directly to our internet radio station by going to iTunes or whatever media player you have, clicking "Open URL" and pasting in: http://174.123.20.131:8120/listen.pls)

Anyway, that's it for now!