inspired by greats like:
bob sprankle's dream - about how school should be,
and alan november's question of who owns the learning,
and steven devijver's drive for visual hygiene,
and wendy drexler's networked student ,
and david truss' insight in the pods are coming,
and lisa nielsen's enrage me or engage me - about how we should be doing school - passion-based,
etc...etc....etc.... (you know)
and most and foremost - by kids - with brilliant, young, fresh, ....energetic minds...
here are 2 ways we are starting out our school year differently:
1. about groupwork: rather than having the teacher pick groups and switch them up every so often, students pick members per their passion, and keep them - hopefully for a life time - their professional learning network,
see here how we are starting out: groups
and here for where we are: hosting our groups
http://talk-ed.ning.com/
2. about textbooks : rather than relying on a book - (no disrespect to written text - but we were looking for something alive and unboxed) - each student will have their own twitter account, with carefully selected people to follow - again per their passion - which will serve as a most brilliant search engine, and - each student will join diigo in order to bookmark all they find from twitter and in order to access the info their classroom coach (that's me) has bookmarked and continues to bookmark for them here
learning is fun, alive, passionate....
school should be too.
yes?