It's been a wild ride these past few weeks, with much to do. We were supposed to leave on a brief vacation this week, but circumstances seem to be telling us that that may not be possible, or will perhaps have to be truncated and/or postponed. But nothing is all bad, and mostly it's all good.
I've taken great pleasure in taking more time to look through all of our work together this summer. This little post is mostly to let you know that I'm thinking about all of you, and wondering how you are,… Continue
On Tumblr, you can travel along with me as my thoughts morph from some pretty wide-world questions about how our general education curriculum should be reformed to encourage deep and lasting learning, to a much more specific exploration of education movements of the last century, specifically the Modern School Movement of the early 20th century, and the philosophical anarchists who championed this learning, among whom were members of my family.
My text post on tumblr,… Continue
I'm still grappling with the tension of learning alongside vs. needing to be *expert* in something before we introduce it to others. I'm thinking about the freshness and excitement with which we approach our new learnings, our new discoveries. In Zen (about which I actually know very little) this is called beginners' mind, and it is highly valued. Your roshi, or teacher, will always be encouraging you to get back to beginners' mind, the mind that is fresh and unspoiled, where the inner critic do… Continue
Even if our curriculum during these twelve days were to be solely focused on techno bells and whistles, we would be facing this same eternal struggle. There's just way, way more than we can even begin to touch on in any responsible way in this short period of time. Add to that the fact that yes, we are trying to look at all of this tech in a relevant, rich manner that asks all of the hard questions about why do it in the first place, and does this serve the needs of the content curriculum, and w… Continue
Added by Julie on July 14, 2008 at 1:55pm —
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It's one thing to have a learning curve -- it's another thing altogether to have a learning block. I think of myself as having a somewhat "steep" learning curve in technology -- there were things I took to right away, and made my own, and then made less progress as I went along.
But then there were things that, as soon as I encountered difficulty, caused me to throw in the towel. I haven't been able to figure out how to put up the kind o… Continue
Added by Julie on July 9, 2008 at 10:16am —
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I'm excited about today's work. There's another part of my brain and my soul that's completely on overload, but I'm beginning to remember how to just lock that down for now. I've done it before. It's always good, it's always cathartic to have work, to lose oneself in something else in times of difficulty or stress. Continue
I'm thinking a lot about what we talked about in the middle of the day -- which tool fits which class, which book, which activity, which part of the curriculum, which project. There's an art here to figuring out what's going to work best in a given situation and for a given task. The wonder is in feeling that you actually have these tools at your disposal, and in beginning to figure out how to make use of them, and how to work with them, one thing in conjunction with another. Pairing memory chai… Continue
I'm feeling a sense of ennui this morning that I refer to as "blog sloth." It feels as if I don't have anything to blog about, even if I know that's not true. There are a billion things percolating in my mind, but this morning I just don't have access to them. And I don't know why this is, or why this feeling comes over me from time to time. The exercise I use to get past it is to ask myself what lies beneath, what is it that I don't want to write about? And as soon as I can get that much honest… Continue
For many reasons, this has been a terrifically satisfying week for me. I'm thinking about this as a newer paradigm of teaching and learning. I do like learning things from experts, but there's also something to be said for the process of having teachers who are learning alongside their students, and having the passion and excitement and ignition of passing along primal moments of discovery -- and making space for students to teach each other, and to teach teachers. This paradigm is especially wo… Continue
Added by Julie on July 3, 2008 at 1:30pm —
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I was just writing a comment on someone else's blog entry, about how working in these tools is different from writing with pen and paper or even writing in Word, for example. I asked the question "how does this change the composing process?" except that instead of composing, I wrote "composting". Hmmmm. I like that. My new composing metaphor is composting -- taking all the bits and pieces of biodegradable debris and letting them ferment together to make a rich and fertile soil... Continue
It's been another pretty satisfying day for me. Can I just say that I really, really love it when I figure something out in a new environment? What this makes me realize is that I don't play enough at home, at least not with technology. I feel constantly pressured to know things NOW, and to begin using them. This has to be a metaphor for other kinds of learning too. It's obviously really important to mess around as much as possible. And that, of course, leads to thoughts about how messing around… Continue
Like yesterday, I'm trying to hold on to the thoughts I had on the train, on the way up here. The thoughts have morphed somewhat because of our morning discussion in room 228. But one thing happened that was really resonant, which was when Margaret brought up reader response theory.
That's what I'd actually been thinking about on the train. I was thinking that everything I've been reading recently is colored by my most current experience. Everything seems to be about the battle between good and… Continue
Working in Hypertextopia brought up a lot of feelings and thoughts for me. Although it probably wasn't the environment of Hypertextopia so much as it was doing memory chain. Actually, perhaps it was the two things combined. There was something about the ease of moving from box to box in Hypertextopia which allowed me to delve further into places I might not otherwise have gone with pen and paper. Excavating memories is painful, difficult work. Especially for me, especially right now. I cannot th… Continue
I'm trying to remember what I was thinking about on the way here this morning. I always have all the good thoughts while I'm doing something else, and can't stop to write at that moment. C'mon, you know it's true for you too -- don't you do your best thinking in the shower?
Oh, I know. I was thinking about the fact that we've already started touching on the subject of conventions of language and writing -- that "correctness" came up as an issue yesterday, in our very first session. It's always… Continue
In some ways, I think this day exceeded my wildest dreams. That's a pretty extreme statement, I know, but I had the same happy feeling during "play time" that I have when I work with a class and they're all bent over their writers' notebooks and all you can hear in the room is the scratching of pens. But this was even better, because I walked around the room and saw people playing with Splash-Up and making their own Nings for their classes and personalizing their blogs on this Ning. It doesn't h… Continue
Thinking about the Institute in its entirety
We are coming together this summer with different ideas, skill levels, and thoughts about what we may gain from spending 12 days together. Paul and I want to know what you're hoping to learn more about -- by tomorrow, by next week, and/or by July 17th. What do you want to be able to do as a teacher/educator in your classroom in September? What do you want your students to be able to do? What do you want to help your school to be able to do? What do y… Continue
Added by Julie on June 25, 2008 at 3:30pm —
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This is a voicethread presentation that I made using old photos of my mother, taken by my father, most likely, in the 1930s and 40s. 
