Public education could be the most accelerating venue for social change. Rather than waiting for any of the incredible [past, current and ongoing] innovations in redefining public education to scale, imagine we scale the individual. Imagine a new (old) narrative that can start anywhere because it begs no prep or training. Imagine we trust simplicity enough to give it a go. Imagine hastening equity, and ongoing sustainability.
I’ve been working with youth the last four years, locally in Loveland Colorado, as well as virtually around the globe. We have been in an intense mode of experimenting with first, self-directed learning, and now, the intersection of city and school. We've been afforded an incubated space (sand box) within our city, as a connected adjacency (both in and out of) our school district.
This 3 min video
is a good zoom out vision of what we’re experimenting with, where the community/city is the school/curriculum, and public education now becomes a great vehicle of social change.
We are seeking to:
This app idea is our next experiment to tackle #2 above, as a means to scale individuals. Could the talking become data we use to ground the chaos when our focus is individual curiosities? As we seek to set a city (any group of people) free in spaces of permission where they have nothing to prove, how can we structure/organize/facilitate that?
We believe the app (or just experimenting with the idea) might
- encourage daily self-reflection (vs standardized testing),
- create a non-linear portfolio (mesh network), as a model for perhaps future credentialing/legitimizing, much like Bunker Roy's community,
- use that mesh network to match up people in a city with like curiosities, in order to create gatherings that matter.
(at least) a daily conversation with self.
And this collaboratory space idea, (a community-owned kitchen table, per se), infused with tech, much like Deb Roy’s home, would provide a non-entity space for our city to practice the art of conversation as we emerge as an authentic community. As well as offering a means for anyone anywhere (nationally/globally) to participate to whatever degree they desire.
An actual collaboratory space is another way we believe tech can help us get back to us, by facilitating
(at least) a weekly conversation with others.
These possible evidences loosely outline ideas and uses of moneys, we’ve crowdsourced in our city so far. We believe, the no-strings-attached moneys described
- give us a jump start to hasten this idea (city as school) along,
- model how rich we might feel in a new time/talent (share) economy,
- model how sustainability might look if public ed were funded per census, because communities are now working together, listening to each other, about what matters to them. [this takes care of health, homelessness, suicide rate, war vets, perhaps even war, .. a people agenda]
Seth Godin - The Icarus Deception (why art is the narrative of being truly alive)
Lisa Gansky - The Mesh (how to share more in a city)
Saul Kaplan - The Business Model Innovation Factory (what an experimental sandbox in every city looks like)
our original site [labconnections - to find more in depth documentation]
the be you site [stand alone site - to focus on process of learning model]
our group on facebook [to connect to people/conversation]
glossary & faq's via slideshare or pdf [some words/phrases we use a lot]
glossary & faq's via slideshare or pdf [some words/phrases we use a lot]
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