evolution of a homeroom class: Settled. Purposeful. Humming. 1/11/08

(This is an ongoing blog about my "switchover" as an elementary homeroom teacher to networked learning and rather intense involvement in Web 2.0 activities. We have a class ning, for one thing, and that ning provides a center for much of what we do.)

This week was the stuff of dreams. If I had sat back from afar and tried to envision education going a certain way, this would be it. We are there, right now. Of course, I don’t mean that more things and yet better things shouldn’t be in the picture, but I do mean that what’s going on is very, very satisfying. There’s a wholeness, a completeness about our “classroom family,” our networked learning community. The learning that’s going on is just what I want to see.

A highlight of the week: Art Snacks projects. Monday morning first thing, I walked students through the assignments for the week, including Kevin’s how-to-draw videos. There was a greeting up on our page from Kevin, himself! As soon as I started showing the videos, the kids were mesmerized. Interesting—I had planned to show them several starts of drawing-sessions just to give a sampling but the kids would not let me stop and change the screen! We had to watch making a fire ant and making a killer whale ALL the way through, even though the kids weren’t drawing at the moment. I attribute this to the integrity (the wholeness, the artistry) of the videos we were watching. They’re truly captivating. Kevin has a nice voice, too, and tells good stories—he puts the pictures in context. Also, he talks about philosophy of art, and of learning. (I should know—I’ve seen a LOT of his drawing-sessions because they’re so often being used in class.) I’d give those videos five stars, indeed. A highlight for me this week was seeing kids so involved in this active learning. (You watch the videos, pause, draw, watch, pause, draw, watch.) And I loved responding to a chorus of exclamations in the morning when kids would come in proudly clutching their last-night’s drawing. "Here's mine!" (We’ll be posting their work at Art Snacks this week).

Equally important has been our touring of EFL, David’s network. David, too has left personalized comments for us, and the class feels very welcome and included. EFL is a positive, bustling place to be. It’s a worldly grand-central station of language-learners and teachers, and contains within its largeness a very personalized appeal.

The kids marvel at the huge number of choices there are for where to go—and the minute our administrators get on EFL, that same minute they are jumping back to our network to try things out with regard to network design. David proviedes an exemplar model of “design for community learning” and the kids are learning a lot from him. We moved into increased use of Google Earth this week. I asked David if he’d tell me where his school is so the kids could find it. He sent back a puzzle for the kids to do, that required them to actually navigate around the area and think! How perfect. Three kids spent two hours on the puzzle. You should have heard the kids finally exclaiming with glee “We found it!!!”


Both of these networks are impacting the kids’ families in addition to being something my students do in school. Since the sites are up at home (as the kids do their homework), family members see what’s going on. One girl mentioned that after her homework is done her brothers and dad jump on to Art Snacks to go through the drawing videos themselves! And several students are gathering phrases from other languages—expressions that have family history—for sharing at EFL this week, in a forum. I have families that are multilingual; I think sharing all together at EFL will be a uniting, validating, both personal and global thing to do.

Another thing about the two networks we’re exploring right now: we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg. There’s SO much more to delve in on.

Ok, more highlights: I’m happy to remember images of my student Christine, sitting and working by me while she was logged into my creator account (administrator wasn’t enough) to test out the changes we were proposing in the structure of the class network. She was roving the technical networks to get tips on how to set up and link pages within our class ning. Here she is at Ning Developer network.

She’s on the smartboard because it’s on cable (missing wireless filters) and we don’t have to go ask our school IT people to unblock each network we’re using. (They would do it for us, but it can get tedious, particularly at a site where there are parts inside the networks that have to be unblocked individually as is the case on some of the learning networks we go to.) But I digress.

What makes me happy when I think of Christine is that she is so empowered, so filled with a view that she can reason her way through things. She has a great attitude. Christine envisions what she’d like to see happen, then goes after the information that will allow her to actually create what she wants. She’s the one I talked about in an earlier writing, the one who promotes Alice as a learning tool, and recommends it with a caveat: “You can’t just go there to be entertained; you have to think.” She has a lot to say about learning. Once she told me “You know, a lot of what I learn is through mistakes. I make a mistake, something interesting happens, I try to reproduce it. I just keep trying stuff.” Look where this thinking is getting her. And I think her elementary school is preparing her for MIT!

Other favorite scenes: Jaival wanting some HTML code and going straight into W3schools.com for the information. And Stan, Jaival, and Christine happily touring through the code on EFL classroom, figuring out the architecture of the ning.

This week I really hadn’t expected much; it was the week after vacation. I thought we’d be easing into things, that a restart of class would be necessary, that the kids would be “somewhere else” and would need some cajoling to get back into the swing of things. Not so. I believe that since we are now networked with our own ning, we have a drive—and a vehicle for shared expression.

The students picked up exactly where they left off, only they had even more energy. And the energy—it’s focused, supremely focused. (Remember the chaos I talked about several times, the chaos that was the first result of becoming completely networked? Where has it gone?) I noticed that when the kids would come back from their specials classes (gym, art, language, etc), they would just jump right into their work, with absolutely no direction-giving from me being necessary. They were involved; they wanted to get back to what they’re doing. Kids would check in with me to show me something, get some feedback then settle back in. Some would ask to go off to the lab, the library, or the hallway. (We have to spread out so we don’t overload any particular router.)

Here’s the list of the network projects assigned this week: “fancy current events,” participation in Kevin’s Art Snacks, continue touring EFL Classroom, and begin building a center for sharing with our first grade buddies. (The last one got put off as the others were more than plenty.)

Fancy Current Events provided some of the best examples of student collaboration in learning I’ve seen lately—and I’m talking mostly about what I saw actually happening in class, not even the results (although the results are impressive, too). What I saw: kids reading articles out loud, highlighting main points, discussing what’s important to write about, searching out other references on their topic, and listening to each other as they collaboratively write a forum (which contains links to all references). That to me seemed pretty darn cool.

I like this project-based school time. And I think that having a class ning is most of what made it happen. Suddenly everything we do has multiple chances for viewing and feedback; it’s more “actual” sharing than some of the other here-and-then-gone school activities. We're building up a place of learning that's ours. It's a lively place. And the whole thing is now such smoother sailing. I don’t need to “be the boss” (too often, that is) or the “sage on the stage” (too much) or anything really, other than coach. It feels like a properly running soccer team: the captains keep the morale and energy up, and demonstrate through their actions the “way to be.” Everyone’s working hard. Everyone has plenty to do. People know their work includes doing whatever they can for each other.

Over the week we talked about what to do with our network in general; our plan has been to have the closed and private network and then to create another network for Connie’s Class and Friends. I proposed not starting a second network and just allowing some people into our current ning, people like grandparents, parents, friends, other classes we’re working with, and some of my collaborator-friends at Fireside Learning. The kids nixed my idea. They want to keep a place that’s all their own. They want another network too, one that has an expanded membership. So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll be maintaining two class networks shortly.

I need a reporter; I’ve already gone on far too long and there’s more. What I want to talk about, though, I’m going to put off. It’s one of the topics nearest and dearest to my heart: bringing the elders along with computer-use. Who needs and desires connection more? This last week we brought the computers along to the retirement center and showed our senior-partners the computers, with quite mixed results. That’ll be a topic to talk about all by itself. I need a lot of help with that.

Well, if you’re made it this far in the “evolution of a homeroom class” post, I should send you chocolate. Thank you for listening! And please send any ideas you have about what in the world is going on here, and what we might want to consider next. Although sometimes I feel really happy about what’s going on, ALL the time I feel like I need to talk about it (with people who care) to help sort out the dynamics of this new kind of learning. I am always wondering things: What is too much, what is too little direction? What provides proof that students are actually learning and that time spent on networking and web2.0 activities is worthwhile? What is the right amount of time to spend on computers, vs. being outside playing, reading, or doing pencil-and-paper activities? In fact, I should send additional chocolate if you’ve not only listened but are willing to share some of your perspective and advice!