Now build it out with an evocative vision. Improvise progress by tinkering: with lots of trial and lots of error. The not knowing is the best bit: the mysteries the surprises, and from time to time the windfalls!
Hello there, I'm Steve Collis!
Click on "contact", won't you, and wave right back at me?
This is the first in a series of posts tracking a radical new school structure I am pioneering with my colleague Ms Talar Khatchoyan in Years 9 and 10. It's a pilot program that could become universal.
We're calling it the GAT Class, for reasons I shall explain one day.
The premise: No program. No tests. No teacher talk. No outcomes. No bureaucracy.
The students will show up on day 1, and will begin to define their own learning pathway as they find clarity regarding where they want to go.
We're starting with a modest number of students, with an entire spectrum of academic track records. In fact, during the pilot, the students themselves will help equip the structures around the course.
Structure?! Well, yes, of course: structure is the million dollar question.
Structure does not equal bureaucracy or paper work, does not need to emerge from the teacher, does not need to be the same for each student, does not need to be set in concrete.
Structure, rigour, pressure, accountability, wild ambition, real-world application, light-bulb moments at two-a-penny. All this and more, is the aim. / GAT / is going to be nitro-learning, steroid-learning; the sort of learning that happens when you're obsessed and in love and are veritably seduced by the process.
More, I cannot tell for the moment. Stand by for the unfolding saga! Talar will post her thoughts here too, as will students. We'll document the whole journey and hopefully we'll see how structured learning can be without any of the standard structures we associate with schooling.
This is the first in a series of blog posts entitled /GAT Project/ They will appear regularly at this website, categorised under 'GAT Project'. If you'd like to receive future posts, you can:
- click here to subscribe to Steve's blog in general by email, or here in a reader.
- click here http://www.happysteve.com/contact/ and indicate 'GAT Posts Only' in the message body - I'll email you when I update the GAT Project just for the duration of the series.
He captures the sheer absurdity of current educational structures. “Why does a 300 person lecture even exist anymore?” I would ask the same about teacher talk at school.
So what role does the teacher have? A relational, mentor role, offering life-wisdom and expertise on the process of learning, but not source of information.
3. Collaboration Space.
In the industrial era, we worked for money, which is an extrinsic reward. Now we’re rich enough to work for the joy, interest, fascination and desire to contribute. These are intrinsic rewards.
If you think we’re not rich, check www.globalrichlist.com No one has to work if they don’t want to.
Collaboration space for teachers: twitter, the blogosphere, infinite online conferences and collaboration tools. A hive-mind of teachers, buzzing with creative thoughts about how to transform education.
Teachers on Twitter collaborate and contribute for the joy and meaning of it, not to please their boss or pass registration.
4. Game Space
Intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards: climbing a mountain to see the view or to get name in the paper.
‘Gamification’ is controversial, but it is just a new word for extrinsic rewards.
Behavioural psychology will tell you there is nothing wrong with extrinsic reward mechanisms.
School is already game space. Competition for marks and for teacher praise.
Winning at the school game does not equal winning at the game of life.
If you haven’t played a MMORPG such as World of Warcraft, or a Facebook game like Farmville, then unfortunately you’re ignorant about a learning revolution that has happened under our feet.
Another aspect to all this is that our world is far more ‘entertaining’ than it was. Teachers aren’t interesting enough to compete. Don’t bother trying!
- Students working on groups on bean bags, the floor, steps, tables, lounges.
We base many of our spaces on these mythic concepts:
- the water hole, where we feed on expertise.
- the camp fire, where we discuss, explore, collaborate.
- the cave, where we bunker down as individuals.
Most of our school walls are now giant paper napkins, covered with ‘Idea Paint’ that turns them into whiteboards.
The Future: A Learning Village:
No bells, no discrete lessons, no 9am to 3pm.
No clear distinction between teachers and students.
No clear distinction between ‘school’ and ‘real life’.
No set timetable. Various experts available.
No year groups. Students cluster together to achieve projects and progress through a very wide array of learning paths.
Teachers as mentors, students as entrepreneurs.
Various physical locations for learning, becoming a new key community space for people of all ages. A new neighbourhood watering hole. A centre-of-gravity for young people and adults alike.
Quick announcement first: I am presenting on 'technology as a game changer' at the ES4A conference on Wednesday June 29 at 12.40pm (Sydney time, GMT + 10). I will publish my notes right here, and hopefully a live video stream. So, check back here at that time if you want to tune in live!
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Virtual 3D worlds continue to fascinate me as with their potential for immersive, collaborative, community-of-practice learning processes.
It's not that I think every school needs a virtual world. It's just that time and time again, as I have observed students in virtual 3D environment, I have gained insight into the nature and dynamics of collaborative learning. See my previous posts, or www.youtube.com/lestep for our previous projects.
My colleague Andrew Thompson approached me a few weeks ago with a proposal that we launch a 'Minecraft' virtual 3D world for the students. I didn't even know what Minecraft was.
In very brief: the Minecraft environment allows participants to 'mine' materials from the natural world, from sand to diamond, from wool off roaming sheep to wood from trees, then craft these materials to create buildings, equipment and other structures. An element of danger in this giant-sandbox is added with monsters, which are optional, which come out at night and can destroy the virtual infrastructure unless savvy defences are left by the inspired builders.
So, we met and came up with a plan to get it going, advertised to the students, set up a behaviour charter, recruited just two or three student leaders, and just last Tuesday, 5 days ago, hit the 'launch' button.
YIKES! A lot can happen in a few days. On day 1, only one student realised the world was open, and set about creating a big school sign at the top of a tower. By day 2, 10 to 15 students had constructed a village, and by Thursday evening there was a thriving city!
I took some brief footage each day when I logged in. Have a look:
The most recent news, today, day 5, is that some students have banded together and intend on creating a replica of our school grounds within the world!
Yesterday, another student showed me this:
Believe it or not, it is a simulation of a CPU. Each block is in fact a binary 'gate' of the sort: AND, OR, NOT, XOR, etc... this is the sort of transistor junction that allows computer processors to perform arithmetic. The simulation, above, adds two binary digits together.
What's the point of all this? Well, it yields insight into how people, adults and children alike, learn:
- we learn from each other in a community of practice.
- we take joy in achieving new breakthroughs and passing around the new skill to others.
- we collaborate spontaneously in ad hoc groups as inspiration strikes.
- we learn by experimentation, fueled by an authentic and therefore unstoppable desire to understand, to achieve a sense of agency in the new environment.
Only a few minutes ago, while I was in-world, a student shouted out that they had discovered a large mine underneath the ground. 'We should create a public teleport to it', he said. Another student created the teleport function and posted it prominently in the town-square. Meanwhile the first student went about equipping the mine with flaming lights and a ladder so that people could get around in the dark.
This is a Year 8 boy. His first thought was to use his discovery to assist the rest of the community.
And it happened just now, Sunday afternoon.
But it isn't homework that sees the students earnestly exploring, building, upskilling.
We could improve so much if we got rid of 'school' altogether, and built new learning villages founded on authentic learning principles. Viva the Learning Village, and down with skool!
Imagine a Primary student who is extremely reluctant about writing...
...composing a careful, polished, 10 minute script where two individuals dig deep in their quest to understand what 'democracy' really is, invoking history and the original Greek root of the word in the process, and all this in every day language!
How is this possible?
Well, via a little tool called 'Xtranormal'. Xtranormal allows students to compose a comic film, including camera angles, actors, speech intonation, and so forth.
The student in question chose to make the conversation to be between Queen Elizabeth II and, well, some guy on the street. It is actually very witty, to boot.
In the first 45 seconds or so it's a bit slow to start, but the rest is pure gold:
I've created a video tour of our Open Sim virtual world in its current state. We opened it to student leaders 6 months ago, and then to any student a few weeks ago, and momentum has now built up.
The island is available 24/7 and is slowly being built by its student population.
To me, this space exemplifies 'community of practice' learning processes. Behaviour is self-regulated. Learning is organic, spontaneous and authentic.
In the video:
0 min - I walk through the initial forest, through the 'sandpit' where anyone can build,
1 min - to Booralie Metropolis, where teams of students claim land and put up buildings.
4:30 - I show the process by which objects in the world can be programmed.
5:30 - Next, I fly around the entire island showing some class projects, including quiz chairs linked to Moodle using SLOODLE.
7:30 - Finally, I conclude with some comments about the nature of learning and power of 'community of practice' learning. I think schooling as we know it needs to go extinct as soon as possible. Schooling has toxic elements that breed passivity and alienation in a good proportion of the students... students who will otherwise go on to have highly successful lives. A 'learning village' model has been articulated and is long overdue.
