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.

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.

A few days ago, I was chatting with Lindsea on Skype about a variety of topics: music, education, and the need for adults to communicate more often and more in depth with students. We briefly brainstormed a few ideas we each had for the EduPunk challenge, when we arrived at the following slogan for her Street Art campaign: “Education everywhere. Take back your education.” We discussed the idea of Guerrilla Learning, and the idea that we realized was repeatedly emerging was this need for students and teachers/adults to meld their networks.

In the last few months, I have been lucky enough to be involved in a small but growing community of teachers and students who seem to be connected on a variety of projects. Intrepid Classroom, in part, grew from this already fecund community. Students like Hannah, Soojin, and Lindsea are working closely with teachers like Clay, Dianne, Mr.Mayo, Paul Allison, and myself to blur the lines of the traditional educational model. We are working to help each other understand that “Education is everywhere” and we want to “Take back our education.”

Below are snippets from the transcript of our chat:

Lindsea: What’s greater that I know I am able to learn on my own

Me: We, teachers are always trying to paint ourselves out of the picture, but if we are worthless than what the hell are we doing teaching? I have lived a pretty cool life. I’ve lived in Africa, worked in the Bronx, I have an MA blah blah blah, and I have a lot to teach teenagers, stuff that I wish some of the old fogies would have taken the time to teach me.

Lindsea: I don’t want teachers to stop teaching

Me: So student centered doesn’t mean without a teacher

Lindsea: I want the wisdom and the stories. I just want to be included. I just want to have power, I want to be listened to, I don’t believe in student only learning. What’s BS is the fact that students are “listened to” but aren’t heard. The classroom needs to stop being a stage for teachers. We need to break the fourth wall interact with the audience

Me: Yeah but institutions like education take a long time to change, so here we are light years ahead of what Mr. Joe Average is doing. The question is how do we instill a love of learning to the masses. School is not designed to help kids find what they love, it is designed to fill their head with “knowledge” get them ready for college, a good job and so on. School should teach kids how to learn.

Lindsea: What I’m trying to promote is this: FIND PASSION, LEARN THROUGH PASSION, SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING W/ TEACHERS’ GUIDANCE

Me: Yeah but those teenage years are tricky, because when you give young people total freedom, they don’t know what to do, most of them.
You have been so trained to please and be rewarded with grades, that you don’t know how to follow your own passion, most of you.

Me: Take Intrepid Classroom. There have been some great discussions, and maybe that is where learning is taking place, but it feels like everyone is waiting for me to call the next shot.

Lindsea: The teachers help them make goals and essential questions and then have checkpoints, etc

So what do you think about this discussion?

Part II

How do we safely combine these networks? How is it that I was able to openly and freely chat with Lindsea via Skype? Is this okay? Are you ready for it? There are many questions, but it is vital that we look at them, because if education is everywhere than you need to learn how to access it and be safe.

Teachers often send students mixed messages: The internet is a scary dark shadowy place filled with equally dark and shadowy figures looking to track you down and do you harm. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Next breath, use the internet to meet and communicate with as many people as you can to help you become a more self-directed learner.

What is a motivated risk-taking learner to do? There are thousands of online articles about cyber safety and online bullying, so I will not give you advice. Rather, I want to hear from the experts, you! What do you do? How do you know what is a safe and appropriate relationship online? I raise these questions because we have recently had a few new teachers join the Ning. At first I was thrilled, because the influx of new adult voices into Intrepid Classroom, is just what Lindsea and I were talking about. These teachers should be great resources and potential members of your fledgling networks. But then, the paranoia began to rattle around my brain: As our community grows how will we know who to trust and interact with? How do we know that some stranger does not enter our midst and do us harm?

I want Intrepid Classroom to be as open as possible, but that does not mean that we shouldn’t be aware of the potential of danger. I have collected all of the questions raised in this post and listed them below. Please take the time to comment on what you read. When you are done, please find the new teachers: Mr.Kimmi, Mrs. Durff, and don’t forget about Shelly Krausse and Nirvana Rose Watkins. Make some contact with these people. See how these adults may be able to help you learn. As for the new teachers to Intrepid Classroom, please take the time to meet some of our students as well. Let this new model of network begin. We are adults and students with one goal: “Education everywhere. Take back your education.”

Here are the questions to think about:

1. How do we instill a love of learning to the masses?
2. What are your thoughts about the discussion with Lindsea?
3. How do we safely combine adult and student networks?
4. How is it that I was able to openly and freely chat with Lindsea via Skype? Is this okay? Are you ready for it?
5. What is a motivated risk-taking learner to do?
6. What do you do about Internet safety?
7. How do you know what is a safe and appropriate relationship online?
8. As our community grows, how will we know who to trust and interact with?
9. How do we know that some stranger does not enter our midst and do us harm?

As we move forward with this project, we will see that we are all on different levels technologically speaking. I hope that by using a variety of different tools any student, who comes to the Intrepid Classroom, will feel more and more comfortable using Web 2.0.

We are assuming that most students who regularly visit this site already have a blog and are familiar with its usage. If this is not the case, please don’t be shy, leave some comments and someone will help you get started.

I have been trying to organize the best tools for us to use: Wikis, Google Docs, so we can get to know each other, share ideas, videos, music, and any other things we may need to exchange. After much thought, I think a Ning is a great place to start. I will continue to use this blog as home base for posting lessons, longer pieces, links and more, but it may be a good idea to establish our resources on the Ning as well.

For those of you who don’t know a Ning is

Ning is an online platform for users to create their own social websites and social networks. Ning means “peace” in Chinese.Ning hopes to compete with large social sites like MySpace and Facebook, by appealing to users who want to create networks around specific interests or have limited technical skills. The unique feature of Ning is that anyone can create their own custom social network for a particular topic or need, catering to specific audiences.

Basically a Ning is like a closed/smaller version of Facebook. I have created one for us here, so please stop by and sign up. It is pretty straightforward. In the interest of security, if you are not in high school and not familiar with social networks, please do not post a picture of yourself. Otherwise it should be quite simple. If you have any questions either leave them as comments here, or try and figure it on your own.

See you on the Ning. I will try and post another music lesson soon.