I wish I had more to say on this video, but for now I will just share it with you and see what you have to say about it.
“Our collective appetite’s affect on landscape is a sobering phenomenon…”
Photographer Edward Burtynsky makes a wish: that his images — stunning landscapes that document humanity’s impact on the world — help persuade millions to join a global conversation on sustainability.
One of the regular participants here at Intrepid Classroom, Hannah, wrote a post a few days ago that I feel really elucidates the ethos we are trying to exude here. (How do you like that alliteration?) I completely agree with her simple sentiments below:
I marvel at nature. Have you ever stood in the middle of the woods and just looked up at the trees? It is humbling.
I will always remember the hours I spent sitting by a creek, shaded by tall stately trees, writing poetry about the sheer beauty of my surroundings.
We need to slow down and appreciate the splendor of nature.
It is refreshing to see young people connect with nature. It seems so many times today that young people are getting farther and farther from the natural world. Do you have any experiences you would like to share? Write about them on your blog and link here, or paste them onto this page of the wiki. Add pictures, video, music. Go shoot some video of your favorite nature spot, add some music, write a poem, create some art. Let us see what nature means to you….
In the tradition of doing what I ask of you, let me say that I have been working on a short film of an amazing hike I had at Samuel P. Taylor Park in California over the summer. Here is a taste:
Thank you Stephen Downes at Half Hour blog for this amazing description of education.
What I want most of out an education, I think, is to spark a dream in a child’s eye, a dream born out of authentic experience in a real world, and nurtured with the best care and support a society can provide.
I am not sure if I have ever officially introduced Clay Burell, but as long as I am on my networking kick, let me do so now. Clay is an English who was working in Korea, but is freelancing at the moment. His acerbic yet often comical take on education is a breath of fresh air in a world of old, boring, and stuffy teachers. His trademark theme of “…unschooliness” will probably teach more than whatever your “real” English teacher is teaching you. Check out his blog and this post in particular.
Lindsea and Hannah already know Clay quite well. Do you ladies have anything to add? I could add a lot more, but Clay is a much better writer than I am, so go adn read for yourself. Introduce yourself, add him to your network; he will prove to be an invaluable resource.
For those of you still trying to understand the concept of growing your own personal learning network, let me illustrate a simple example.
I met Nirvana Rose on Twitter. After a few exchanges we realized that we have a lot in common. I began to read her blog and added her to my Facebook page. From there we realized that we read many of the same books, a recommendation from Nirvana is like gold to me now! Although she is in Australia and I am in Doha, I find Nirvana to be a kindred spirits of sorts. She is a member of the Intrepid Classroom Ning and has been known to lurk and comment here on our blog.
About half an hour ago she sent out a Tweet introducing a highly motivated and talented student she is teaching who is tech savvy and interested in changing the world. Sound familiar? I quickly commented on Phee’s blog and invited her to come join us here at Intrepid Classroom.
I hope she will come by and meet us soon. I urge you to subscribe to her blog and give her some support; I am sure she will return the love.
Welcome Phee! We hope to get to know you better soon. If you are a regular reader please give her some advice on where to start. I suggest reading this page.
I recently came across Lauren Ogrady’s blog, which led me to a wiki project she is running for students and teachers. I thought it might be an interesting project for members of Intrepid Classroom. Please link back either here or the our wiki if you post anything so we know what you have done.
The following is from her wiki:
I recently wrote how I would love educators out there to collaborate in creating a piece of work relating to themselves. The idea is to begin to bridge student and teachers through the use of multiliteracies. We spend so much time together in education but never stop to reflect on who and where we are. This is the idea behind this.
The catch is that it has to be in six words and matched with a picture you take yourself. I am currently thinking of mine and brainstorming possible options and look forward to collaborating here together and gaining insights into each other through this collaboration and content creation. I would then love to see students have a go at this project and upload their work so that we can begin to gain insights to us as educators and more importantly insights into the students we teach. I would also love to know any budding musicians out there who might be able to create a soundtrack to our insights at some stage as well.
Some of you may have met Lindsea online or here at the IntrepidClassroom, if you have never heard of her you should know that she is often an active member of our little experiment, and even when she is not actively involved, she is an ardent supported of everything we are trying to do at the IntrepidClassroom.
You can find her at her blog Love and Logic or on her Ning profile. After much contact online, Lindsea and I realized that we would both me in San Francisco this summer, and so we decided to meet. I will not get into the play-by-play of what we did and how it all felt. I will leave that for a future post or maybe Lindsea can pick-up on that. Instead I will paint a very abstract sketch of how it all went down: the two of us met, drove around the city, watched a drum circle near Hippy Hill in Golden Gate park, went shoe shopping, went to an herb store in The Mission, took in the view at Twin Peaks. We blasted music by local Hawaiian bands and Modest Mouse in the car driving through The Castro. We talked about- Adolescence, sustainability, education, music, Hunter S. Thompson, responsibility, hypocrisy, politics, capitalism, apathy and revolutions. I thought about how- I wish my daughter would grow up to be as wise as the young woman by my side, who hours before was reading Kurt Vonnegut. I wondered whether or not I could ever meet her mother and thank her for raising such an amazing young woman. I relished the thought that I have a group of young people who I am cultivating worldwide to aid in the revolution and how that is all I have ever wanted from teaching. I wondered why I didn’t have teachers like me when I was Lindsea’s age. I probably would have avoided a lot of confusion, but then again maybe it is in that confusion that I learned the most important lessons.
It was a good day.
After our meeting, we promised to write blog posts detailing every facet of our meeting, but as it so often happens, we both let life steer us towards other priorities, other projects. That is until last week, when we re-connected and had a chat on Skype. We recorded the hour-long talk and below you will find my first Podcast. Lindsea is also on a Monday deadline to post her Podcast. I am very curious to see what she found important to highlight and how she will view our talk.
Please comment on your impressions of what we had to say. I would love to set up Skype calls with any of you and talk about anything you wish to discuss. I hope that podcasts become a regular part of IntrepidClassroom.
I have already posted this on yhe Ning, but I could resist double dipping.
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.
I think this video is pure genius. Both the content and execution are sublime. What are your thoughts? Can we do something like this? Don’t think about the skill required or the craft, but rather the creativity, the intent, and effect.
Hello and good morning loyal readers and members of the IntrepidClassroom. I hope those of you who are back in your real classrooms enjoyed a relaxing and rejuvenating break. For those of you still taking pleasure in the last days of August, enjoy it while you can, because it is time for all of us to go back to work.
I start work in a few days; my new job is working with K-5 ESL students. Working with younger kids is new for me, but I am very much looking forward to working with kids whose only worries are imaginary monsters in the corner of their rooms, as they sleep, not real corporate monsters who are destroying their planets.
I am sharing my new status with you in hopes that you will understand how important IntrepidClassroom will be for me this year; I need some form of activism in my life, and I hope IntrepidClassroom will fill that role. By sharing my standing I hope this online classroom experiment will be important to you as well. Despite what you do in your “real” schools this year, I hope you will make time to touch base and stay involved with the work we are doing here.
We still have a substantial amount of unfinished business from last year, but I am starting to realize that without the threat or rewards of grades and credit, I will always have a hard time motivating you to “get things done.” I hope that you will prove me wrong this year. All I can do is throw project ideas at you and hope that some of them are completed. I will do my part in making this site a resource for important books, music, and films. So the least you can do is read the blog, but I hope you will take ownership of the work we do here and make this site a productive agent of change.
Please read the first two posts of the year: Introducing Michael Franti and Daraja Academy, and let’s get started on our first full year in the Intrepid Classroom!
I have been waiting for the right time to introduce the next project because it is one of the most important things in my life. While, I am not sure launching it in conjunction with the Power to The Peaceful Project is the best idea, I can wait no longer. A few of you have already had a glimpse into the Daraja Academy through Facebook and conversations we have had, but now I want to make the official presentation of the Daraja Academy to the readers and members of the IntrepidClassroom in hope that both projects will complement each other and create a synergistic sensation.
Daraja Academy will be the first free secondary school in all of East Africa. In January 2009, 25 girls from Kenya will be given a chance for a secondary education which would otherwise not be possible, given their current economic situation.
The mission of the Daraja Academy is to cultivate a community of individuals with a sense of cultural awareness, social conscience, and environmental responsibility, all while instilling talents that will enable them to open doors to a global society.
I am sure there are thousands of similar project like this worldwide, so what makes this particular project so important to me? It was started by my best friend. I have a personal interest in the success of this school. So where do you come in? I want the Intrepid Classroom to become a marketing and fundraising arm of the Daraja Academy. My dream is that each of you will do the research on Daraja and take what you find back to your schools and start a Daraja Club at your schools. I hope that with my help you will create videos, write blog posts, and do whatever it takes to raise awareness and money for this project.
This is not some ordinary inaccessible online project. Like I said, the founder of Daraja Academy is a very good friend of mine, thus giving me an insider advantage that can make this experience extremely personal for you if you so choose to make it one. I hope that we can create several viable and active clubs that will make your school a sister school to Daraja. This could be the beginning of very long and personal relationship between you and a very worthwhile project.
So where do we start?
1. Snoop around Daraja’s offical site. Get the details; learn more about the in-and-outs of the school.
2. Read the official blog, which is being written on the ground by Jason himself. Comment, interact, and get to know Jason.
3. Watch the videos embedded below and on youtube.
4. Go to Facebook and sign up as a supporter of the cause and get your friends to join as well.
5. Share what you find, how you feel with as many people in your life as possible.
6. Express interest in starting a club at your school by commenting on this blog. I would like to set up a Skype call (possible podcast) to brainstorm ideas of what these clubs will look like and what they will do.
There is a very good chance I will be going to Kenya to visit Jason in December, so it would be great if we could have some substantial offerings to hand over ti him from the IntrepidClassroom.
I hope this will be a yearlong project, so please get in touch with me if you want to be involved. This is a unique opportunity for you to be involved with a very grassroots project to educate young girls in Kenya. There is no bureaucracy, no complicated management, just a man and his dream of starting a school in Kenya. Get involved! Rember Daraja means bridge in Swahili and you are Daraja!
Watch the videos and get started:
If you wan to learn more about the histroy of the campus check out a movie called The Boys of Baraka and to learn more about my relationship with the founder, Jason Doherty, please read this post.
