I must say... I truly admire the progress Vanmeter is making.
Especially that they are doing it with such grace. It is a joy each time a see a tweet from one of them, and it's got the #vanmeter hashtag, their super's twitter name @johnccarver, their highschool principal's twitter name @derondurflinger, and their amazing librarian's twitter name @shannonmmiller. It's like watching the Walton's (meaning - they know how important relationships are) move toward a better world. How could you not want to follow?
So.. huge thank you to them for modeling something we all need.
I know there are other schools and other districts doing cool things much like Vanmeter.
I would like to encourage everyone to spread the love even more, involve more of us, especially if you currently have the means with tools and web access and time given in the school day.
Three things in particular:
1. Steve Hargadon, Jenny Luca, and Jackie Gerstein put together a Ning called Student 2.0, hoping that it would populate with students that want and need to drive their own learning.
2. Noble Kelly and Sharon Peters head up Education Beyond Borders and are hoping to expand that outreach with a Ning site called New School, again with hopes that it would populate with students that want to drive their own global outreach and learning.
3. I think we all agree that what the future is looking for is indispensable citizens that are not driven by a paycheck, but by passion. School will work best if that is a place where those passions/talents/arts can be recognized, facilitated, optimized. Christian Long has launched a project that is perfect for finding or refining a student's passion. It would be great if we populated his project, or started similar ones of our own, with Ted talks, Tedxteen talks, BIF talks, BIF conversations.
We are fortunate to get to start a district wide Innovation Lab next year. Part one of the lab allows students to create their own course. Three courses we already know we will be taking on are the three above.
The other three parts are about something else Vanmeter, and many others, are doing so nicely, helping students to become tech interns.
Making school real life.
Imagine..
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