Publish or perish has moved down the educational chain, all the way to the bottom. Make movies, create podcasts, write blogs, whatever… but if you’re not adding to digital content as both a teacher and a learner, you’re gumming up necessary change in k-12 teaching.

Personally, I LOVE this idea! It sounds open, authentic, and like real-world learning. What if I wasn’t the right teacher for a particular student? or for his / her interests? Great, move on — find the right teacher, the right material, the right mode of learning. And yes, we should all be teachers and learners.

I agree with you — it’s going to happen whether we like it or not. And in response to “Can education sustain a model where the content is free?” I say, yes to the content, but perhaps not the delivery, creation, and all the other bits that make up the learning process.

Perhaps some of that pressure can come from below, by providing those institutions with dynamic graduates who have constructed their own learning with accessible web 2.0 tools and access to shareware/freeware programs designed to communicate with eachother. Perhaps the institutions will realize they need to change because of the pressure from above, as industries looking for their graduates no longer want status quo theorists, but practical constructors of knowledge and experiences.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out for the my nieces (year 1 of college) and nephew (one year old). I firmly believe that students who want to go to school learn to do so because of the family values placed on education as well as the value the educator/facilitator places on meeting their unique needs for learning. Kudos to those who use their tools to engage them; a heartier kudos to those who use whatever it takes to keep them engaged. The tools (web or otherwise) educators use are critical for efficiency and extensions; the creativity we embed in instruction essential for emotional and connective reasons.

1. A Big question for Every Teacher is …..Who owns the learning?

2. We need to create collaborative learning Communities – where everyone is a teacher and a learner

His vision with what schools could be (and what he implemented at Mabry Middle School before his resigned) aligns with what you are hoping to achieve.

We have to do this for our students. They want to create content, they want to learn, they earnestly seek to be engaged but we control it out of them (“I told you to set up your paper this way – one inch margins, name on the right side, date under it, blah, blah!”)

We need to move beyond the status quo in education. There’s so much more we can do.

Answer: Yesterday!

It’s because we have not yet become facilitators that I think much of this stuff will happen.

If we follow this train of thought through, at what point do we become facilitator rather than teacher?