Back to School: What is that?
August is right around the corner and while those of us in Seattle are still counting on half of our summer in the next month, its already time to start thinking about school. I am certainly turning my head from a summer of contemplation, reading, writing to a whole new year of working with parents and students. Before students return to school, teachers do.
Just as I turn my head, my head is turning me; inside out that is. What does it even mean to go "Back-to-School"? In my first year of teaching, now almost a decade ago, I remember pausing at the end of each school day and asking, "So now what, we stop learning?" Of course, we didn't. My question was metaphorical. That said, summers were hard for me. I get that we need a break, to step away, to be with family but the question remains: Why are our lives, our ways of learning strucutured in ways that demand periods when we "learn" and others when we are on "break". My overly simplistic counter argument is that we learn all the time. I am certainly not an advocate for the 12-month school calendar. But, I do wonder what it means to weave living and learning together more tightly so they are two sides of the same fabric of life. Its a big question, I know.
In the meantime, here's a tool that is breaking the mold. In Mindshift's post titled "10 Ways to Boost Your Game for Back-to-School", teachers (and parents) will find compelling ways to include technology and games in learning environments. Of all the resources shared in the Mindshift article, I chose to focus on this one. Learnist has been on my radar for a while. Now, in its Beta release, it provides a social setting to share what you know and provide ways for others to learn something. Its Facebook for learning, learning anything that can be taught using electronic media. Its a grand tool for social networking based online learning. It marks the ways in which skill-oriented learning will increasingly be done online. A trend-marker in the ways in which education is changing.
I can't wait to dig into it more. I am on Facebook all the time. Maybe, I'll be "learning all the time now" too! Off to do just that!