Edupunk?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?
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