Merlot

I walked the web since 1994, professionally and with great pleasure. Still amazed by its richness and development so far. Stumbled upon Merlot, the University of Oregons' virtual campus through a new connection on LinkedIn. The campus shows a magnificent learning model around virtual safaris in nicely visualized settings. They also show some awesome 'cutting edge' designs on blended learning environments on linked webpages The development since early days in 1994 in integrating materials and means is immense and unexpected, as this one on Geoscience shows you.

Currambena Primary School

I first look at the pictures on a school-website. First impression is always dominant in further reasoning. Spinoza considers intuition being the highest order in thinking, above logic. Spinoza's intuition is somewhat different to our present connotation, but still. Currrambena has an appealing philosophy and makes an effort to offer something different in the educational system. What more evidence do you need?

Village School and Fitzroy Community School

They started in 1982, so The Village School is well established in Melbourne, Australia. Between 55 and 80 children attend the school each year, guided by 5 permanent teachers, a part-time language teacher, an equestrian instructor (riding horses!!) and various coaches, mentors and parents sharing their specialist skills with the students. On of their principles is learning by making mistakes. They 'encourage children to take risks in a non-threatening, caring environment in order to develop realistic, problem-solving skills.' and also ' that some common sense rules are necessary to ensure physical and emotional safety.' Read it all in their philosophy - document on line. Must be in the air down under!! In the same city another alternative school, Fitzroy Community School. Some international connections in Asia too.

The Alternative School

The Alternative School (aka TAS) ' was set up in May 2007 to offer a new and exciting alternative KS4 curriculum (age 14 to 19) for all those young people who are not engaging with main stream education.' It is not clear what status this initiative has or how many young people participate. They all strive to get a Duke of Edingburgh Award, which also gives them discounts on outdoor equipment. They ' strive to engage young people in a wide range of positive activities and to develop them as young adults, at a pace that is suited to that young person and with subjects and experiences that means they are interested and therefore willing to partake.' An interesting and innovative approach. Too early to call it a success, however. They maintain a blog that shows a professional video on the project.

Sudbury Valley School

The SVS was founded in 1968 and at the moment there are 39 schools or initiatives on 2 continents that are listed as Sudbury - education schools. They must do something right.

Students are fully responsible for their own learning. In practice this means that students initiate all their own activities and create their own environments. The physical plant, the staff, and the equipment are there for the students to use as the need arises. The Netherlands hosts 2 Sudbury Schools and there are a number of initiatives that are very similar in approach and pedagogy, but find it difficult to survive. The existence of an international community around this initiative and the solid mission statement might explain its success. And the use of villa's like the one pictured of course.

Hole in the wall

Cut a hole in the wall that separates you from the slums around you. Mount an interactive computerscreen, make some adjustments on the other side for a keyboard and make sure its weather resistent. Then WAIT!! It didn't take long before children, that very likely never touched a computer before found out how it worked and started playing with it, teaching each other. Sugata Mitra did and he didn't stop there. You can read all about it from the website they also made. A beautiful initiative, got me by the ankles, anyway.

SFETT

The San Fernando Education Technology Team, better known as SFETT, is an exceptional team of creative and talented individuals who continuously strive to engage and captivate students while providing them an avenue of expression through the use of digital media. That is what they say themselves, have a look at their productions to decide for yourself if this initiative has got some potential. They also created a blog called Flickschool with ideas that helped them over the years.

NotSchool

School is out!! Is it really? If we look around we see schools, much alike those I visited. Not bad schools, certainly not, but what if your finished with it and still have to go. To some of these youngsters Notschool is an answer. It provides tuition, in a way that it helps them in their learning path, without the school - agenda. Numbers are small compared to the system, but they proved themselves already. In my country there is a similar project using the same paradigm. NotSchool makes me ask why the educational system itsself does not succeed in serving this type of children.

Wondertree - SelfDesign

I visited Wondertree in 1995 and met Brent Cameron, the founding father of an initiative that celebrates its 25th year of existence this year. I stayed in an old villa, in the centre of Vancouver, crowded with teenagers, eager to learn, much less eager to go to school. They went out for payed work as entrepreneurs, were asked on conferences to show the latest developments of Adobe apps. A vibrant community guided by 'experts'. Nobody even dared to call them teachers, as these kids 'designed themselves. The image is the non-verbal icon of their learning path. Visit them here.

826 Valencia

Are you an active pirat? If so rush to 826 Valencia to obtain all you need to become the best equiped and best dressed pirat in the 21st Century. Another reason to go might be that you are somebody who needs some professional assistance on your writing. The place is one of the finest under - cover remedial 'teaching units' I have ever heard of. Find more yourself, you rascal, here! No doubt you will be able to find the other, more or less similar shops in the US yourself!

Strength Movement

I just did some reading on the Strength Movement on their blog. Interesting development that promotes another way of looking at your child. Always take the bright side of life: look at strength, rather than weaknesses. My kids went to a an innovative school, that looked at all aspects of development: emotional, cognitive, social and cultural but also could have done with this spirit. They have developed into fine kids and still learning. A promising trend that has an equivalent in my country: New Learning. A buzzword that nevertheless holds an excellent ideal, similar to the Strength movement.

Global Kids Reports

Global Kids produced two interesting reports on the 24th of this month on one of their sites. They deliver an overview of the SL Community Convention Fall 2007 in Second Life. The reports are concise, an illustration of actual use of SL and give a nice number of points to ponder about. The summary gives a good overview, the examples are best of breed. I 'd have liked more examples, not only the best, but others too, good to follow. We have TeenNews every day at prime time on our TV-network. Would we send teens to Darfur? Of course not, but I would support all initiatives to copy paste GK's Childs' War in my country! The recommendations are well worth reading for newbies and experienced educational users of SL as a tool for learning and teaching.

The Metaverse Roadmap

Completely in line with the widespread belief that at least a part of the present web will transform into a 3d environment John Smart et al have developed a Metaverse Roadmap. This initiative delivered a vast amount of ideas, beliefs and scenario's about virtual worlds and its impact on a wide variety of industries. Opinion leaders of all sorts contributed to this. I only missed Bill G, Steve J. , Tim O', Tim B. and myself, of course. A must read, whatever ideas you might have yourself about this. Oh, and the invitation to contribute is still open: mail all your input to roadmap@accelerating.org

Cedar Island 130/84/24

I enjoy looking at works of art. Not necessarily in a museum, although I appreciate the efficiency. A selection of works from one artists is more to my liking. This young man makes beautiful watercolours and combined with a 'sunny disposition' the result enlightens the heart. To be seen at the Cedar Island Docks. More of his work can be viewed here

Discovering the World

Fernandez Armesto published two books recently on the activities of discoverers, explorers of the Unknown. He calls them: fanatics, romantics, losers, adventurers, visionaries and sometimes genuine scientists. They seemed to have two things in common: bad food and living conditions all the way and! ... never knowing where you are. I recognize the last bit, and some of the epitaphs. Isn't that what we ask the first few moments when teleported to a place whe have never been before InWorld?

CNN

A dream for developing journalists, it must be. Isn't that what you want to become: a CNN reporter? Well, if not it is at least an opportunity to learn some of the skills needed, and in a realistic setting too. Many contributions over the past days: on skating, parties, art, and many other items. No in-world politics yet, but who knows. The editor in control keeps the CNN - site alive and kicking. Have a look now!

Mad Hatter?

I like wearing a hat. It is comfortable, has a certain style, is distinct and also shows a bit of extravaganza. In short: it is an expression of myself. I want this world to see my hat. So do I in RL. I only just really thought about it writing this little article and thinking about one of the most interesting outcomes of my interviews. SL as an expression of ourselves.

(Second) Life Skills learned in SL

Sometimes work is a burden but accompanied by Zotarah it becomes a feast for the mind and the eye. Snowfire was there too, a fine horse and very quiet. We talked about her experiences with students and teens about life - skills. What is learned in Second Life can be transfered to real life as they are emotional - and cognitive experiences. We sometimes express ourselves in other, may be more open ways in SL than we would in RL. What do we learn by doing that, and how can it help us teaching about identity and self esteem?

Second Home: historic game on line

Being who I am I had to google: second home and look what I found! A German organisation facilitates the use of a web-enabled game called Second Home. It is a historic game, set in the 16th century about trade, church and kings in three languages: English, French and German. It's free and fun for all, allthough I doubt if the interface will satisfy game-wise kids in Europe or the rest of the world.

Missed an interview

Missed an appointment because the grid was down, longer than expected. Finding Avatars, outside SL is not always an easy task but the effort is almost always worth the try. Accidentily I stumbled upon this site. Islab, a search engine in RL that searches the in-world databases. Comes in handy when you do not want or can enter SL.