BP3_iGoogleScreenShots

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson / Self Reliance

My past is fraught with bad choices and good ideas cast to the wind, a myriad of wasted opportunities, an ocean of what ifs. Perhaps that would still be the case had fate not intervened and bounced me along a string of unlikely coincidences, leading me directly to Room 246 in Valhalla High School. There, the students and I have proven that Marilyn Ferguson was right when she wrote (in the Aquarian Conspiracy): Our past is not our potential. The Mac Lab is a living testament to abiding by one's spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility.

As I wrote in my class blog:

I knew how this second semester was going to unfold when I stood before the class the day we returned to school back in January [2009]. I remember, quite distinctly, how I took a breath and began to speak, but the words weren't anything I'd planned on saying. Sudden inspiration altered our direction that day. The blog was born the following week. We've had one constant though, from that first post right up to yesterday's. We experiment. Every creative act involves a measure of uncertainty. We don't move from A to B in a straight line. We learn though process. We ponder, reflect, imagine, adapt, improve, refine, present, and begin again. We actively seek out inspiration, always reaching higher.

At some point during the first viewing of the video entitled, Networked Student, I experienced that gleam of light which Emerson claims flashes across one's mind and I knew, without a doubt that connectivism will play an important role in my CBR. I've searched and both EBSCOhost and Google Scholar contain papers and articles. And to think we're supposed to finalize our 25 or so sources by Monday. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me the process is fluid and organic, not rigid and structured. The iGoogle project took on new purpose between one breath and the next during that video. The screenshots are posted here and posted early because I want to follow this idea right now.

I'm wondering how many other priceless ideas are waiting in the wings of our Full Sail experience. As was said in my Big Idea Pitch: Theory is all well and good but we need need real world solutions today and that's what I'm interested in.

Note: The imagery on display during that segment should make clear that I'm interested in the practical application of theory and I'm intent on applying it now (as I've done since day one), not waiting until month six.

Every student deserves the best I've got the moment I've got it. In the Mac Lab, we show what we know—both the students and myself. Our experiment is ongoing and the results so far are more than encouraging. (Current qualitative and quantitative findings are described on this page.)

As Emerson wrote in Literary Ethics:

The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history... Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry… Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.

My classroom already has one of the most extensive teacher-created resources in the world. Between my old website and the blog, there are over 70GBs of resources. On Monday I'll be introducing the students to the concepts of Connectivism and Personal Learning Environments. The Mac Lab is already a hybrid classroom where students work at their own pace via our online resources. With the introduction of these concepts, students will have the opportunity to take even greater control of the pace, depth, and breadth their learning. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to connect with a few more of the disenfranchised, the ever-present children left behind, the flatliners.

Fate handed me a second chance. My students deserve no less.

Long ago, far and away, or always somewhere near 

Conductor’s instrumental, sends notes to inner ear 

Harmonic reconvergence, improvisation’s planned 

To amend the broken page, pour melodies from band 

Watering the wildest flowers, a second-handed chance 

To trade in white-washed paddock walls, for suit and horse and lance 

— Dream Yet Complete