Archive for June, 2008

Never stop doing

Published by Anthony Chivetta on June 24, 2008 in Teaching. 11 Comments

Recently, Arthus treated us to the importance of nothing. He wrote:

My favorite thing of all is to do nothing at all. I do nothing all the time: I walk nowhere, I think about nothing, I work on nothing.
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Doing nothing is the same as doing anything that strikes your fancy, or not. Doing nothing is getting a crazy idea, then forgetting it.

I compare Arthus’s “doing nothing” with the time that I spend thinking and tinkering. Such time is of critical importance to any creative individual; it is when we find new directions for our ideas and explore the breadth of the intellectual realm. The world would be a very boring place if we never allowed ourselves to wander in new directions.

However, one must wander somewhere. I believe that our lives are nothing more than the sum of the actions that we take. If we only wander through the intellectual void that is doing nothing, nothing is all we will be. Life isn’t about meandering through our thoughts, it is about grabbing a thought by the horns and running with it.

guiding

I believe that a fully lived life is without boredom. You should always be doing something: pursuing some new idea, trying or learning something new, working towards some end, building something, never losing momentum.

Every experience we have provides us with new information that we use to make sense of the world around us, expanding our schemata. This understanding of the world, the one that comes from experience, is what separates the knowledgeable from the wise.

Our thoughts are nothing without the actions that make the best of them. Arthus may have started his blog while doing nothing, but he had to do something to make it a success. We must move from thinking to doing. Only nothing has been accomplished by thoughts alone.

So, with all due respect to Arthus’s philosophy of doing nothing, I would challenge you instead to do everything that you can, to live your life fully and never let a moment go to waste. Never be bored, never wonder what to do, just do something. Go write a book, learn how to paint, act in a play, install Linux, write a blog, start a company, study religious texts, learn a new language, volunteer with a new group, connect with an old friend.

If you are not exhausted, you should be asking yourself: what else can I be doing?

It should be the same in our schools: are we giving students the opportunity to do everything in life that they can?

  1. Photo by author, on Flickr

Nothing’s Important

Published by Arthus Erea on June 5, 2008 in Learning. 16 Comments

Everything

My favorite thing of all is to do nothing at all. I do nothing all the time: I walk nowhere, I think about nothing, I work on nothing. No, I have not turned into a nihilist. I simply chose to live my life for the unexpected, not the expected.

In set theory and other branches of math, nothing is often very similar or equal to everything. That’s the sort of nothing I like to do. Doing nothing is the same as doing anything that strikes your fancy, or not. Doing nothing is getting a crazy idea, then forgetting it. Ne rien faire est en train de parler en français pour aucune raison. Doing nothing is writing letters to yourself in the future. Doing nothing is pulling a random book off the shelf and reading 3½ paragraphs on page 27. Most of all, doing nothing is listening to all things you can’t hear:

“I like that too,” said Christopher Robin, “but what I like doing best is Nothing.”

“How do you do Nothing?” asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long time.

“Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it ‘What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?’ and you say ‘Oh, nothing,’ and then you go and do it.”

“Oh, I see,” said Pooh.

“This is a nothing sort of thing that we’re doing now.”

“Oh, I see,” said Pooh again.

“It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

“Oh!” said Pooh.

Everything

White is all colors and no color. Nothing is complicated and simple. “I’m doing nothing” is what you say when you really don’t want to say what you’re doing. Or, it’s what you say when you don’t know what you’re doing. Nothing is the easiest thing to do and the hardest thing to teach.

The web is great for doing nothing. Rainy days and dirt roads likewise. The greatest things happen when we’re doing nothing. I started my blog when I was doing nothing.

In our fast-paced society, we do a bit too much of everything. As the long days of summer approach, now is the best time to do nothing. Forget about exams (speaking of which, my favorite way to study is to do nothing) and college and graduation and do nothing. Maybe lazy people are just really, really smart.

We should all do a little more of nothing.

  1. Photo #1, or lack thereof, by author
  2. Photo #2, or lack thereof, by author

Edupunk?

Published by Lindsea on June 3, 2008 in Leading, and Teaching. 76 Comments

I just recently heard about edupunk, the term that’s seemingly sweeping the edublogosphere and causing all these old people to grab their dusty Sex Pistols t-shirts and bust out the black eyeliner.

From what I can gather using Wikipedia and Bavatuesdays (the blog where the term originated), edupunk is basically the DIY culture applied to education. It’s taking a concept and making it reality. I suppose it’s a call for action.

Wikipedia gives these examples as edupunk: “Legos, Edusim, chalk, Hypercard, Moodle, use of the Bliki (blog and wiki mashups), students’ art work on the outside wall of the classroom, and students teaching their teachers how to use technology.”

The only thing that I see missing in these discussions of “edupunk” are students. Sure, in theory students are supposed to be given more power, but where are the student voices in the actual discussions of edupunk? This Jim Groom, smart and interesting man though he is, is an adult, a teacher, and (I’m sorry) not actually punk or DIY. Coining this new term and making it seem cool because it uses the word “punk” doesn’t change the fact that a teacher made it up, teachers are discussing it right now, and a teacher will be implementing the theory.

I realize that the application of the term isn’t exactly focused on the real punk community, it’s obviously about education. But I’d like to make it clear that the punk and DIY cultures are the domains of the younger generation now. The students will be the leaders in whatever underground change there may be.

Don’t you teachers remember when you were young? Hippies? Protesters? Implementers of change? Controllers of the cool, anti-establishment, nonconformist underground culture? Can you imagine what it might feel like if a bunch of older people, outside of your culture, used your name for something completely different? And didn’t include you in the discussions of it?

Plus, it’s not like any of the things listed haven’t been happening. Most of us on Students 2.0 have been helping our teachers with technology for our entire high school careers, Youthnet has potential to be a DIY student run educational forum, Space is a mostly student run online lit mag, Intrepid Classroom is a great example of online DIY education, and not to mention Clay Burell’s Personal Learning Network classroom. Packaging us up into one little label isn’t right.

“Edupunk” teachers: you are not punk, and you are not DIY. You haven’t even gotten close. Where’s the community? Where are the equal voices?Until a teacher is willing to listen to student voices and include them in discussions about their learning and education, they are not what I would call edupunk.

What do you think?

  1. Photo by Negrillion Flickr
  2. Photo by The Hell Caminos on Myspace
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported