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In a recent post, Investing in the Status Quo, Darren Draper on his blog, Drape’s Takes, quoted Arnie Duncan, Secretary of Education, saying,

If all we do is invest in the status quo, then we’ve missed this once-in-a-lifetime historic opportunity to give our children the education they desperately need and deserve.

It seems to me that for adults, the psychological grip of the status quo is usually stronger than their desire to learn. But I am convinced that when their desire to learn is ignited, anything is possible. If that’s the fact then the question is obvious.

Who will ignite the desire to learn in the adults today so they will ignite the desire to learn in our children tomorrow?

I wrote about investing in our children in an October 2007 a post, “Investing Our Wisdom in Their Potential.”  In the post I wrote about efforts in Massachusetts to change the educational status quo. Unfortunately the status quo still reigns supreme despite a governor, a legislature and a professional coalition of educators supportive of the principles to challenge the status quo discussed in the post.

We have made a substantial investment in the status quo. I think about the children we have failed and will continue to fail until we embrace change and adopt the best of what we know about informed practice.

Have the times have changed enough for the post I wrote to have relevance? I have faith in the Obama administration. Can Arnie Duncan’s can spur the nation’s political leaders and all educators to do the right thing?  Will we finally invest the wisdom of our profession in the potential of all children?

For a long time the educational knowledge base has shown us the ways to get it right for kids, but as a society, we have chosen to endorse policies and a status quo that fail our children each year. We are not engaging, challenging and inspiring our children to learn as we should be. The evidence is all around us. We need to acknowledge that and invest our professional wisdom in the potential of children!

Now is the time to admit that for every child every year is a once-in-a-lifetime historic opportunity.

Now is the time to admit that for every child and every community, for our nation and our planet every year we invest in the status quo is an historic lost opportunity.

Now is the right time to start the change. Now is the time to believe we can.

After I wrote this post today, I learned that President Obama spoke to the National Academy of Sciences this morning. After I listened to his speech, I realized this post was a prelude to the post I just wrote regarding the President’s comments about STEM eucation. Hence, ‘We’re Going to the Moon’: Part 1 and Part 2.

“The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning examines the effect of digital media tools on how people learn, network, communicate, and play, and how growing up with these tools may affect peoples sense of self, how they express themselves, and their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically.

Thanks to the generous support of the MacArthur Foundation, open access electronic versions of all the books in this series are available. Follow the links … below to read these editions.”

What? So What? What’s Next?

The Digital Media and Learning series is a major six-volume publication by the MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with MIT Press on the effects of digital media on young people and learning that will be used as a framework, beginning in 2008, for the new International Journal of Learning and Media. The IJLM will continue the investigation of the relate topics introduced by the framework. The prominence that this publication and associated journal lends to this emerging field of study seems important, certainly, but what really makes the effort significant in my eyes in addition to the content is “…the participatory and open online review process [used in the initiative that] is helping to establish new collaborative approaches to scholarship.” “Open discussions were held in virtual worlds and on a wiki hosted by the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education.

Excerpts from December 12, 2007 Press Release

The MIT Press today announced the publication of a new series on digital media and learning supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The new six-volume series

examines the effect of digital media on how young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life.

The series’ release marks the launch of the new International Journal of Learning and Media, through which

core issues facing young people in the digital age will be explored.

In a departure from traditional publishing, articles were subject to a robust review process that took place in a series of online conversations among the authors, editors, and the public. These open discussions were held in virtual worlds and on a wiki hosted by the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education.

A Framework for the Emerging Field of Digital Media and Learning

“The series and the new journal are critical tools in providing a framework for the emerging field of digital media and learning,” said Jonathan Fanton, President of the MacArthur Foundation. “Of equal importance is the way in which the articles were written and developed. In a field made up of diverse researchers and practitioners,

the participatory and open online review process is helping to establish new collaborative approaches to scholarship.”

Vol. 1 ~ Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth

Lance Bennett points out that the future of democracy is in the hands of the young people of the digital age in Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth.

Michael Xenox and Kristen Foot tackle the generational gap in online politics. As they point out, it’s “not your father’s internet anymore.”

Vol. 2 ~ Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility

The contributors to Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility look particularly at youth audiences and experiences, considering the implications of wide access and the questionable credibility of information for youth and learning.

Vol. 3 ~ The Ecology of Games

In The Ecology of Games, noted game designer Katie Salen of the Parsons New School of Design has gathered essays not only from those who study games and learning but from those who create such worlds

… the volume contains an article on participatory culture by Cory Ondrejka who as CTO of Linden Labs helped create Second Life and a case study on collective intelligence gaming by Jane McGonigal, premier puppet master of the new genre Alternate Reality Games.

Vol 4 ~ Youth, Identity, and Digital Media

Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, edited by David Buckingham explores how young people use digital media to share ideas and creativity and to participate in networks that are small and large, local and global, intimate and anonymous.

Vol 5 ~ Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected

The range of topics touched on in Tara McPherson’s volume Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected is perhaps the widest of all in the collection. Lest we forget lessons learned from other eras she includes essays by Justine Cassell and Meg Cramer of Northwestern on moral panic in the early days of the telegraph and telephone and Christian Sandvig of Illinois and Oxford evokes the collective imagination applied in the early days of wireless technology and analogizes it to that of the era of short wave radio.

Vol 6 ~ Learning Race and Ethnicity

Anna Everett of the UC Santa Barbara draws on the work a diverse group of scholars including Chela Sandoval and Guisela Latorre from her own campus, Raiford Guins of the University of the West of England, Anotonio Lopez of World Bridger Media, Jessie Daniels of Hunter College and Doug Thomas of USC and others who in Learning Race and Ethnicity draw out lessons from Chicana/o activism, Hip Hop, and digital media in native America as well as hate speech and racism in online games.

International Journal of Learning and Media

Beginning in 2008, the new International Journal of Learning and Media will continue the investigation of the effects of digital media on young people and learning. Supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the new journal will be published quarterly by The MIT Press in partnership with the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education. Funds also have been provided to support an on-line community for discussing the articles in the journal and the issues that are central to the emerging field.

MIT Press Digital Media and Learning

Beginning on December 12, 2007, all the books in The MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning will be available in bookstores as well as electronically at MIT Press Digital Media and Learning.

About the MacArthur Foundation

About MacArthur Foundation Digital Learning Initiative

About The MIT Press

About the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education

Here is a video that was presented in a workshop on Professional Learning Comunities by Richard and Becky DuFour, December 1, 2007, New England Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

You’ve seen the word, you’ve seen the web sites and you may even have one. But have you ever wondered: What’s the big deal about blogs?

This is blogs in plain English. Here is another video production from Commoncraft.

Stephanie Pace Marshall, at the end of her book The Power to Transform, pleads with us not to wait for others. She says “Courage is the capacity to claim what we imagine. If you are carrying this new story in your heart, now is the time to step forward. There is a place in the world for your unique voice, and it carries a message that must be heard. Start anywhere, but begin the conversation, and tell the new story that brings learning and schooling to life.” p. 210

Over the last three weeks the K12Online Educators Community has shown me what courage in the service of children looks like in practice. I have learned so much about you and from you that I am encouraged thinking that you may be my best hope for hearing what I have to say.

Are you ready to take the next step to transform learning opportunities for every child on this planet?

K12Online Community

I will always remember the Will Power to Youth students from Los Angeles, California and the words of Ben Donenberg, who said, at the ASCD International Conference last March 2007 in Anaheim, California, “What [children] need is to feel that we adults in power value them highly enough that we are willing to invest our wisdom in their potential.”

I will always remember Stephanie Pace Marshall for her generosity of spirit and the poetic vision of the new story of learning she narrates in her book, The Power to Transform.

I propose we commit to work toward a statement of Vision for our work. I offer some words to begin the conversation.

K12Online Educators Community Vision

Educators from across the planet come together during K12Online as the planet’s whole-child learning community, a learning community of educational professionals. Each day we strive to kept our promise to ourselves to be significant in the learning lives of each child on this planet. We strive to fulfill this promise by infusing a generative, integral, balanced, inspirational new story of learning into every school and classroom and beyond, every place where children learn. This new learning landscape for educating children is our planet’s best hope for guaranteeing a future where every child goes to bed each night with recollections of feeling healthy, safe, and supported during intellectually challenging and personally engaging days of learning.

The Power to Transform

In her book, The Power to Transform, Stephanie Pace Marshall asks the … leaders of this planet “… to declare a new path, awaken to the songline that imperceptibly weaves through humanity and the natural world, and use its clarity and deep resonance to tell a new story and [create a] transformative landscape of generative learning and schooling.” p. 210

In some way what I am going to ask you will initially be perceived as a Declaration of Independence from our past, but like all learning of significance, it actually is an affirmation of the positive intent of our past motivations; educators always mean to do well by students; however, the profession now knows that to be faithful to our trust with humanity, we must commit to the transformational behavior necessary for shaping the a new generative, integral, balanced, inspirational learning landscape for educating whole children. If we do not commit, the downward spiral for too many children and schools will accelerate. If we do commit, some day each child will go to bed each night with recollections of a healthy, safe, challenging, engaging and supportive day. Like the Declaration of Independence that gave birth to America, there is no other way. This is the courageous choice that has been our songline for years; now it is ready to be born. ¹

Children-as-Learners

Knowing that our planet, at this point in its evolution, requires bold and visionary leadership and significant systemic change if as a civilization we are to secure life, liberty – and happiness for current and future generations,

I propose …

We commit to set in motion the mechanisms for writing and for eventually adopting a Children-as-Learners’ Declaration of Independence from the past story of learning and schooling in favor of a new generative, integral, balanced, inspirational story of learning and schooling; and

We commit to set in motion the mechanisms for writing a Children-as-Learners’ Constitution and a Children-as-Learners’ Bill of Rights for a new generative, integral, balanced, inspirational story of learning and schooling; and

We commit to present for adoption draft Children-as-Learners’ Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights at an Online Convention on a date certain on or before October 2010; and

We commit that once these statements are adopted, to set in motion the mechanisms for obtaining as signatories to the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights, on or before October 2020, the myriad individuals, groups and associations; teachers and administrators; schools and school districts; and local, regional, national, and international government entities; and finally, that

All signatories commit to ensure that all professional statements of educational vision, mission, priorities, beliefs and goals, strategies, actions and measurement are aligned with the Children-as-Learners’ Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

^{1 Stephanie Pace Marshall, The Power to Transform}