Departure Bay

Departure Bay

6000 days

That’s how long it has been

6000 days

Our world will never be the same

Since the internet was unleashed 6000 days ago.

Our EDES class ?

60 days or so, together

Our vision project?

6 days

My world will never be the same.

The Process

This project has become for me a metaphor of an explorer's sailing ship loaded with cargo that is essential for inhabiting a new world. As crew, each of us bring something essential onboard - something that will help us survive, as there will be no going back to the homeland. This is a one-way voyage. Or as Jenkins (2006) observes “there will be no magical black box that puts everything in order again” (24). It is indeed fitting that Ruth nudged us towards Henry Jenkins for our framework, as he interprets for us the process through which media boundaries are disappearing by connections based on content and social interactions.

Genius - we study the guy who explained to me why our own group convergence across various media actually works.

So our group wiki that interprets Jenkins’s work is actually an example of the very process he describes. We have moved far beyond being merely fans of Jenkins, Valenza, Richardson, Utrecht, and Warlick et al; rather we have become world builders. For the first time I have really understood a lesson we educators need to learn: the boundaries between reader and writer, student and teacher, audience and participant are breaking down (Wilber, 2007).

I had not understood that before this course and this project. The giver/receiver paradigm is a pretty hard 40-year habit to break! The challenge however, which in some ways has even become our moral imperative, is as Dawn has articulated...how do we invite other educators to jump aboard their own version of a ship that is sailing to a new world?

It is also fitting that we end where we started: Joyce Valenza’s Manifesto. Seriously do these guys all do lunch together every Thursday? Here’s Joyce:

“Teacher-librarians cannot… lay claim to any credibility …if we do not recognize and thoughtfully exploit the paradigm shift of the past two years”.

But Joyce could have also written this:

“New media creates the potential for new structures of power and access; as schools continue to distance themselves from this interactivity such as blocking fan and gaming sites, disallowing email and instant messaging by students, for example, the lessons learned from school become less and less essential” (Wilber, 2007).

So what a gift it is that we world-builders were able to sail together for a while, inside this project that became both the vessel and the cargo. Within this context I was able to live the project experience through shared knowledge and active participation. It is this lived experience that will therefore allow me to construct projects for students as producers rather than passive consumers. Joanne, of course, played a pivotal role in this as she positioned herself on our ship as our navigator, guiding us while letting us chose the course and even the destination. This example of convergence, to use Jenkins' model, I believe is still not common in our schools. But I have tasted this fresh water and no longer desire the brackish.

What was shipshape? What needed refitting?

Few of us work or learn completely alone. And almost all of us who work in groups could do it better. Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor David Perkins (2003) argues that organizational intelligence can be tricky. His "lawn mower paradox" demonstrates that 10 people with lawn mowers can mow a lawn much faster than one, yet it's far more difficult for the same 10 people to design a lawn mower.

We may have thought we were designing a lawn mower, but we ended up with a ride-on garden tractor! But our crew is composed of keeners and creators who, in demonstrating true life-long learning intelligence, were lured by the prospects of sailing our ship beyond our destination. The problem is, we were running low on supplies - the competing pressures of other course, work, family, windstorms and the passages of life and death. At times I felt like I was going to run aground on a sandbar, but then something amazing and magical happened…less became more.

This is how it worked: last week I discovered that my carefully cleared and guarded final wiki-working weekend had disappeared. In a moment of transparency I called out for help. This wasn’t easy to do as I had committed to completing this task. If you know anything about marathon running, you may know that the runner’s mind is running out ahead of the body. It is the commitment and determination of the mind, rather than the strength of the body that pulls toward the goal, the finish line. So perhaps you can understand my reluctance to admit that I need other hands to pull up these flapping wiki sails. But the horror of letting the group down overpowered pride and in a humbling revelation I recognized that I was running a relay, not a marathon. Lesson learned…. delight in the process of social constructivism.

Fresh off my Organizational Behavior course, I was also interested seeing what leadership framework would be revealed during the working out of the project. Our crew self-assigned tasks, as there were no “appointed” leaders of the processes. Therefore it was interesting (although not surprising considering this group) to see what proved to be layers of emerging servant leadership.

Does this look familiar?

“The focus on servant leadership is on sharing information, building a common vision, self-management, high levels of interdependence, learning from mistakes, encouraging creative input from every team member, and questioning present assumptions and mental modes” (McGee-Cooper and Trammell, n.d.).

Servant leadership was revealed in the nuances of the tasks that were completed or the alternatives suggested, which were based on individual’s perceptions of what might help achieve the task. We didn’t need town hall meetings. Consensus was often swift, the task was done. This absence of personal agendas or pet projects was manifested in the many quietly completed wiki polishings or link postings or offers to call or to Skype and the many “what if we...” suggestions that continually pulled our ship into better currents.

If you haven’t been terrified, you’re not really a sailor...

In our BK (before kids) days, every spring my husband and I would slip out to Comox on Vancouver Island and charter a Catalina 27’ sailboat. We would set sail for Desolation Sound and spend the week of spring break exploring the bays, islands and hot springs of these beautifully serene inner coastal channels. We were comfortable in our training and our familiarity with these waters. But in the spring of 1989 we carried crew with us. Our newborn daughter Tess, all of three weeks old, was stashed below decks along with our gear. She slept peacefully in her little wicker Moses-like basket tucked up in the vee berth of the double bed under the bow.

But this day things were different...the flirty morning breeze had built up to a steady wind and by midday we were well into a full bore northern blow. Mere hours before, our sloop was drifting in a sunny millpond. The boat had seemed so big, but as the Alaskan front moved south, we felt like a bathtub toy as we struggled to pull down the sails now sopping with the thrashing rain. White-knuckled, we fought to batten down and to steer her into the gushing 20-30 knot winds. The grey-green waves hit us broadside, pushing the bow pulpit into the sea. More water gushed into the cockpit and the leeward cabin window was underwater. I panicked, thinking that little Tess-Moses must surely be tossed from her basket, and I fought the nausea from losing the horizon as I tilted my way down the stairs into the cabin below.

Wait a minute - you steer the sloop into the wind? The first rule of heavy weather sailing is when you are in trouble you do not head for shore. As counter-intuitive as this seems, moving into the rough and raging sea rather than toward the snug little harbour only a couple of miles ahead is the safest place to be. Turn her bow into the wind and face it head on. That is the surest ride, the smoothest ride and the safest ride - facing the full force of the gale head on.

I was worried sick about little Tess and imagined her basket bouncing around the vee berth, yet every time I staggered below decks to check on her - certain I would hear her cries of seasick anguish - I was greeted with silence. Silent as only the deep sleep of a babe completely at peace can be still.

I confess. Pre-Jennifer and Joanne’s EDES courses from the summer of 2009 until spring of 2010, I was floating around the safe and snug harbours, happily using the basic tools of technology without risk. In our pre-packaged online print and module-based courses at Outreach School, I rationalized that there was no need to make more demands upon my at-risk students by adding tech components to their harried lives. I didn’t feel the urgency to go below decks to see if they were indeed safe and sound. What I didn’t realize was that in the future they indeed were going to be violently tossed around precisely because I sailed had risk-free in the safety of a low-tech harbour.

But you, fellow crewmates, have changed all that.

For example, I was so intrigued by Jackie’s Voice Thread of the simulated frog dissection that I thought of my fellow horse-loving student who has dreams of becoming a vet. She would be so motivated by the simulation, and even though I don’t’ teach her science I could still show it to her. Ruth’s beautiful local history project would be an awesome model for my 10-2 social students who struggle with relevance. Mark’s happy endorsement of gaming and my own simulation research brought me to "Real Lives SIM" which would totally transform my social, sociology and psychology courses. Dawn’s gold collection of links and vids and Cynthia’s professional advocacy for online libraries has led me to start an OPPT class wiki that the students will help me develop. Natasha’s modeling of digital citizenship and the ethics she instills in her students have resulted in my awareness of this issue and driven my baby steps of paying attention to student’s sources. In sum what this course has done has modeled possibilities for my students and my colleagues. Isn’t that the goal of teaching in any century?

Joanne’s expectations for us have been high and at times that “one more!” blog seemed like an unnecessary cranky burden teetering on top of “important projects”. Yet her model of leadership proved humane and caring, tempering the workload. It also was through the generous sharing of her personal life and times that set an essential example for all of us - that this eclass was a class first and eclass second. As we followed her model, we offered our own personal trials - uncertain jobs, losing family members, or missing the world of work. Yet we also shared the joys of new dream jobs, the opportunities to connect with our tech heroes and northern athletic heroes. We mused on conferences in places with palm trees, remembered lost friends in gorgeous sand memorials. We shared the sunny trips to Mexico and the uniting of our own loved ones, and talked of our children - especially the babies.

In all this we forged a trust. It’s that simple and it’s that complex.

One of my key thoughts from this course comes from the University of Athabasca’s George Siemens,

When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage.

Siemens sees “teaching” as one who “instead of controlling a classroom, now influences or shapes a network”.

As we sail on our voyage we are indeed learning the tools of conversation.

And I like to think that I played a role in shaping our network. It is upon these influences and this trust that we have built our project - our ship.

We have stocked it with our skills and tools and talents and compassion fit for the next 6000 days - and beyond. We have cast off and weighed anchor.

May we not be afraid to turn our bow into the winds when they threaten to capsize us.

Bon Voyage my friends.

References

Harvard University Press. (July 17, 2003). Groups, like people, can be intelligent. Retreived from http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/culture-society/articles/groups-people-can-be-intelligent

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.

McGee-Cooper, A. & Trammell, D. (n.d.) Focus on leadership. Retreived from

http://www.greenleaf.org/whatissl/AnneMcGeeCooper-DuaneTrammell.html

Wilber, D. (2007). Book review. E–Learning, 4,1. Retrieved from http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/freetoview.asp?j=elea&vol=4&issue=1&year=2007&article=11_Book_review_ELEA_4_1_web