Whereas many Greek towns might be dusty and dry, Edhessa (Έδεσσα) is lush and wet. Much of it is free of cars as well. The reason is a river cascading down from the mountains to the north. It flows through the town, allowing park spaces along the banks and a complex array of paths and bridges crisscrossing the waters. Then, at the edge of the old town (Varossi), the river descends rapidly, culminating in two large waterfalls, which I came to see as fountains of knowledge.

Following the Networked Learning Conference earlier last week in Halkidiki, Greece, we had headed west through Thessaloniki to the region around Edessa. This is where Alexander the Great was born and where his father, Phillip II and Aristotle went to to school together. It includes what are now the major archaeological sites of Vergina, the site of the ancient Macedonian royal city of Aegae, and Pella, the later capital. Alexander, of course, was the one whose conquests spread Hellenistic culture throughout Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and eventually the entire Persian Empire, going as far as India. Supposedly, he slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow throughout the campaign. His exploits might not represent the origin of the knowledge, but they certainly helped it flow and created an early version of a global culture.

The oracles of Delphi and other sites might allow Greeks to claim the fountain of knowledge. Towns with names like Grammatico make one feel that love of knowledge is intrinsic to daily life. Add in the beginnings of Western science and philosophy and the whole nation would seem to be a bubbling fountain of knowledge, if it just weren’t so sunny and dry!

I thought we might be approaching the fountain when we came to Meixa, the location of Aristotle’s school, where Alexander had studied. But it was just north of there in Edessa, that the fountain revealed itself.

The pleasure of experiencing the water town was only enhanced for me when we visited the wonderful town library. Staff there helped us access the internet and told us more about Edessa.

The library has a unique logo combining two of my favorite things, books and water. It suggests that the ideas of Plato, Sophocles, Hippocrates, Thucydidies, Heraclitus, and all the rest flow from the library, providing pleasure for the mind as the cataracts do for both body and mind. I like the way the logo incorporates the @ sign, too. Fortunately, knowledge is never owned by any one time, place, or people, but Edessa and its library make as good a claim as any to being its source.

One of the more interesting, and on-going, inquiries around technology and learning is related to a device–a low-cost, multi-touch, interactive whiteboard using a Wiimote. As most people know, an interactive whiteboard is a large interactive screen on which a projector can mirror a computer’s display. Users can then control the computer using a special pen, finger, or other device. They’re used in a variety of settings including classrooms at all levels, work groups, broadcasting, etc., but cost thousands of dollars. A Wiimote is the remote controller from the Nintendo Wii computer game, which costs just a few hundred.

Johnny Chung Lee, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, has a variety of interesting projects involving human-computer interaction. He discovered a way to build an interactive whiteboard using a Wiimote. His version is portable and can be built for a tiny fraction of the cost of a commercial whiteboard. He’s recently come out with the Wiimote Whiteboard v0.2.

Lee’s inquiry continues with his writing and reflections in his blog, procrastineering. There he writes:

One of the great, unexpected, and perhaps most influential aspects of creating these videos has been how many people they have inspired and sparked an innovative spirit in. I’ve gotten hundreds of emails from young students that express this enthusiasm. But, perhaps one of the best testimonials is this news article about kids in the Clara Byrd Baker Elementary School’s Lego Club in Williamsburg, VA. The students there, led by Kofi Merritt, are getting excited about innovating in technology by creating their own electronic white boards.

Merritt worked with four fifth-graders and a parent volunteer to build the whiteboard. It’s a great example of making the tools for one’s own inquiry.

Digital storytelling can be for any kind of story, but one application I see a lot in schools is essentially responding to a story by retelling it in a digital form, often with interesting rewriting done by the students. This is carried out using software such as Comic Life or PhotoStory, or sometimes with full video. There’s often the use of clay or puppet animation.

I’ve seen all sorts of stories and media used, such as claymation in a 1st-grade class around The Little Red Hen or in a third grade around The Three Little Pigs. You can see in my blog a post about The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog in a fourth grade.

A teacher asked me whether there were any best stories for this, especially in the context of introducing the technology to other teachers. Other than thinking that stories with distinctive characters and action plots lend themselves well to digital storytelling, I hesitated to recommend any particular stories. But he wanted to have some suggestions of what has worked well, or is likely to work well, in terms of engaging students and making good use of the media.

Do you have any experience with this, or suggestions about his question?

Ching-Chiu Lin, who works in this area, says:

I thought about an article in Art Education that discusses ways that illustrators tell stories in picture books, such as pace of turning the pages and arrangement of images (see below). Instead of seeking exemplary books for teachers to use, another suggestion is to think about the possibilities of transforming/applying these artistic storytelling styles into digital form.

For example, David Wiesner’s Tuesday and Flotsam (style of combination and arrangement of images) may encourage students to write their own unique stories (scripts) based on the same images they view. The use of diagonals and geometric patterns in Gerald McDermott’s Anansi The Spider may be easy for younger students to making their videos by using the collage style animation. Or students can use a story from one book and represent it by borrowing another book’s style.

This line of thinking may help teachers not only thinking about the story itself, but also ways of presentation, learning objectives, and learners’ prior knowledge.

Eubanks, P. (1999). Learning to be a connoisseur of books: Understanding picture books as an art medium. Art Education, 52(6), 38-44.

Last Monday night, we visited Square Louise Michel at the foot of Sacre Coeur in Paris. The park and the nearby streets of Montmartre are a living history book, with every cobblestone suggesting times of struggle, hope, fear, and disillusionment. Staying there for a few days makes me feel that I just have to share some thoughts about the Paris Commune and Louise Michel.

There was a time when I knew very little about the Paris Commune, which held Paris for two months in the spring of 1871. It wasn’t part of my history lessons in school, nor did it enter into political debates or everyday conversations. As I read, I began to see references to it—”the democratic and social republic!”, the petroleuses, the horrible siege prior to the commune, which led to the eating of zoo animals, the Federales’ Wall, early establishment of rights for women, why Sacre Coeur was built—but these references were disjointed, so that much what I did know was confused and contradictory. It took living in Paris for a year to help me understand more of what it was about.

I knew even less about Louise Michel, one of the heroes of the Paris Commune, and as I’m learning, much more besides. But I feel a shiver now whenever I think of her. I’m amazed by her passion and ideals, the violence in her life, her writing, her work as an educator in many senses of that word, and her life fully lived.

For a long time Michel was the only woman other than saints to have a Paris métro named after her. The recent renaming of the Pierre Curie métro to Pierre et Marie Curie makes two (or one and a half). Schools all over France bear her name as well. She comes alive in books such as Édith Thomas’s The Women Incendiaries (reprinted by Haymarket Books, 2007; original in French in 1963). I think of her when I play Le Temps des Cerises, a song often associated with the commune and with Michel, even though it was written five years before the Commune.

I’ve also learned that she was an early practitioner of what I’d call inquiry-based teaching and learning. She was a continual learner, inspired by the works of Charles Darwin and Claude Bernard. As a school teacher, she used methods promoted in the progressive education movement (which came much later): interaction with objects such as flowers, rocks, and animals, studies outdoors, and scientific methods. She declared,

The morality I was teaching was this: to develop a conscience so great that there could exist no reward or punishment apart from the feeling of having done one’s duty, or having acted badly.

After the Commune fell, Michel was deported to New Caledonia. Unlike her jailers and many of the other Communards, she befriended Polynesians. She gave lessons to one in “the things whites know,” while he taught her his language. Later, she ventured deep into the forest to work with and study groups still practicing cannibalism. She collected their legends and music as a modern ethnographer might do. When there was a native revolt, Michel joined the side of the Polynesians. Throughout, she wrote poetry, prose, and letters on behalf of prisoner rights.

Later, she opened a school in London for the children of political refugees (The International School). There was a statement in the prospectus taken from Mikhail Bakunin’s God and the State:

All rational education is at bottom nothing but this progressive immolation of authority for the benefit of liberty, the final object of education necessarily being the formation of free men full of respect, and love for the liberty of others.

As infed says, there were no compulsory subjects, teaching was in small groups, and there was an emphasis on rational and integral education. Often, groups of children would bring their own ideas about what to study. Michel wanted students to learn to think for themselves, just as she did herself and encouraged others to do throughout her life.

Louise Michel was a complex person whose every year might fill the life for someone else; a blog post feels totally inadequate. Also, one might criticize the Commune and her participation on many grounds. Nevertheless, her commitment to social justice, her caring for all life, her passion for learning and teaching, her striving for women’s rights and democracy in general, her unselfish work on behalf of others, her strong moral stance, and her unfailing courage set a mark to inspire anyone.

The Youth, Media and Democracy conference concluded yesterday at Dublin Institute of Technology. There was an excellent program, with presentations from youth groups using a variety of media–film (documentaries, personal stories, what-ifs), comics, hip hop, remix (VJ-ing, web video mashups), object animation, radio, and more. There were also interesting talks about the Fresh Film Festival, media policy, the 5th World Summit on Media for Children held in Johannesburg, the Story of Movies, Digital Hub FM, and much more.

I was also impressed with the Dáil na nÓg campaign to encourage mainstream media to provide more balanced coverage of youth, especially to show the diversity of youth activities and not just negative images. A small group of Dáil na nÓg representatives has conducted this campaign, called Fairsay. They’ve had multiple meetings with media and policy makers, assisted by Anne O’Donnell from the Office of the Minister for Children.

Dáil na nÓg means “youth parliament”. Young people come as representatives of their local area to tell decision makers in Government what they think of issues that affect their daily lives.

The young Dáil na nÓg representatives gave excellent presentations and participated fully in panel discussions, demonstrating by their presence how young people can learn social responsibility, communication skills, and connected understanding through active civic participation.

So, it’s ironic that the Fairsay work is only partly sanctioned by the schools. For example, when they were waiting for a media callback they had to have their mobile phones on vibrate during class. When a call came it had to be taken down the hall in the study room. The classroom might be a place to teach about government or media, but not to actively engage with it.

Any teacher knows the many distractions available today for young people, mobile phones being near the top of the list. Still, it’s unfortunate that we can’t find better ways (this applies to US schools even more) to make actually participating in democracy take precedence over just talking about it. The young people at the conference showed how they could use media in diverse ways to move beyond the spectator role to become active participants.

Many people would say that new technologies speed up life, indicated by terms such as “fast forward” or “multitasking.” The same people might add that because young people live in a fast-paced, digitally-enhanced world, we need to change schooling accordingly. If we don’t use technologies to match their pace, we’ll lose them. Moreover, there is so much more to learn today. We need to use podcasts, mobile technologies, video, on-demand resources, blogs, SMS, and other tools to speed up learning for the millenial generation.

Other people question the rush to new learning technologies. They argue that it’s good to learn in a slow, considered, and reflective way. Better to immerse oneself in a book, to read, even re-read difficult passages. Schooling should counter, not acquiesce to, the blur of modern life.

This debate is unlikely to reach an easy resolution. But as is often the case, the polar opposites here share some unquestioned assumptions. Both seem to think that the new technologies accelerate; they just disagree about whether that’s a good or bad thing.

However, when I’ve observed learning in classrooms with a thoughtful use of new technologies, I’ve often seen the contrary: Learning seems stretched out or slowed down. For example, in my last post about The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog, I talked about a primary-level class doing digital storytelling around a book they had read. They built dioramas for scenes in the story, constructed clay figurines for the characters, photographed events in each episode, wrote narration for the scenes, checked grammar and spelling, and eventually created a photostory. This took many class sessions and involved discussions about the story, choices in design and presentation, and referring to the text for details. Certainly the new technologies (digital camera, computer) made it easier to carry out aspects of the project. But the overall effect was to engage the students in a deeper, more critical form of reading and response.

During this time, they didn’t read as many stories as they might have, or write as many words. One might say that their learning slowed down. At the same time it had become more substantive and meaningful. In contrast, their usual activities are sometimes rushed and unreflective.

So now, I’d like to flip the debate. Those who embrace the new technologies need to say that they’re good, not because they accommodate the fast pace of modern life, but because they slow it down. And those who oppose them need to realize that we often use the old tools in cursory, shallow ways which might be corrected with new technologies.

I recently re-visited a classroom, which is one of those that give me hope when I’m down about the challenges facing education today. It’s not that everything is perfect; that would seem so unreal as to dis- rather than en-courage. No, it was that the principal, the teacher, and the students were all engaged in learning in productive, connected ways.

The students were ten-year-old boys in a fourth class. They had read The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog by Jeremy Strong. They then used storyboards, clay animation, a digital camera, and online music to create a digital story. There were six groups and each one responded to a different chapter in the book,

The novel was the overall winner of the 1997 Red House Children’s Book Award. You can get an idea of the story from Strong’s description:

Streaker is a dog that can run as fast as a whirlwind. Unfortunately she is badly trained. She doesn’t know her name and doesn’t know what ‘Stop!’ means either. She is driving everyone mad. Then Trevor takes on a bet with nasty Charlie Smugg. Trevor will train Streaker in two weeks, or he will have to bath in a tub full of muck and frogspawn. Can Trevor’s friend Tina help - or is Tina after something else quite different?

When A. and I talked with the boys we had exchanges such as:

A/C: Do you like this?
B: Yes!
A/C: Can you tell us why?
B: Because it’s fun, not work.
A/C: But aren’t you working hard?
B: Well, yes, it’s work, but it’s different.

We also heard, “it’s easier to think in groups,” “[when you have a question] you go back to the story,” and “[when we disagree] we talk it out.” The activity combined art—sketches, coloring, clay figures, collage backdrops; group work—planning, sharing work, dispute resolution; technology—audio files and editing, digital photography, photostory; as well as reading and writing.

The principal says that activities like this—it’s really a whole program—have totally changed teaching and learning in the school. It’s boosted self-esteem and helped the school re-connect wiht the community. She “can’t imagine the school without it.” The work develops multiple intelligences, fosters project work, leads to integrated learning, and addresses the standard curriculum goals in the process. Teachers learn from each other, and maybe from the children, too,

[See followup after the event at Dáil na nÓg Fairsay campaign.]

What appears to be an exciting conference on youth, media and democracy is coming up on April 18-19, 2008 at Dublin Institute of Technology and the Digital Hub. It’s called Youth Media Democr&cy, “an inaugural conference exploring the effects and opportunities of new media on children and youth.”

The conference explores the ways that media and ICT’s affect the activities, roles, and relationships of youth, through topics such as new media, emerging literacies, digital divide, representations of youth in media, and new media as a platform for democracy in the lives of young people. It also examines how youth can express themselves through new media and will showcase youth-created media.

Through the Digital Literacy in Irish Primary Schools (DLIPS) project, I’ve been visiting primary schools in the Liberties area of Dublin. I’m also visiting 24 infant, primary, and post-primary schools in the Docklands area through Technology in Docklands Education project. This has given me a wonderful opportunity to see a wide variety of learning technologies and ways of organizing classroom learning. Many of the most successful classroom projects have involved some version if digital storytelling (see the photo story entries).

You can get a flavor of these projects from an RTE video at the Francis St CBS (primary level), one of the schools I’ve worked in:

The Digital Hub Learning Initiative has supported this classroom and a variety of others in the area, as well as community groups. One overarching project is Digital Hub FM, a community radio station. Community members of all ages receive training in radio production and then carry out the research, broadcasting, and station management themselves. The broadcasts include music, entertainment, discussion, local history, and youth programs.

There’s a large set of videos posted on YouTube describing the Learning Initiative’s work, including this good introduction:

I was asked to write about a favorite teacher for a project in a philosophy of education course. The person who asked me plans to use the lenses of John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Pádraic Pearse to look at the responses from various people. Here’s mine:

I remember many good teachers, but no one that stands out far above the rest. But I’ll pick one: Miss Dierdorf at W. P. McLean Junior High School cared about literature and history in an infectious way. She organized a class newspaper project in which we wrote and illustrated stories from Greek (and Roman) mythology. The antics of the ancient heroes and gods became as real to us as the day-to-day events around the school.

As I recall, every student felt that he or she had a vital contribution to make to the newspaper. We designed the paper, wrote and drew, because we too cared about the stories and the characters. I think that the sense of becoming engaged with the ideas and feelings of the past or faraway has stayed with me ever since.

It was interesting to see that the majority of the responses were about English teachers.

I should add that there are many mythology newspaper curriculum units available on the web and other formats, such as Greek Mythology Newspaper, by the children’s book author, Bernard Evslin. They all seem to be more sharply defined in terms of skill development and assessment than I remember the class to be.

In about an hour, it will be Dublin’s turn to participate in Earth Hour. The event started last year in Sydney when residents and businesses turned off their lights for one hour as a statement about global warming. This year, 28 cities will participate, each at their 8 pm on March 29. The event is described as a way to highlight “simple changes that will collectively make a difference.”

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I thought this was a good opportunity to post some Dublin at night photos before we have to turn off the lights here. They’re beautiful scenes, but also remind us of the energy demands of modern cities.

I hope that Earth Hour will live up to its expectations, but fear that it may turn out to be no more than another fun event and a way for all of us to feel good, without addressing the fundamental changes needed to treat our planet and our children more kindly.

The photos are not my own, but are used under Creative Commons licenses. On the upper right is the Custom House by Jimmy Harris. It’s near to where I work. The O’Connell Street bridge at the left is by Hans-Peter Bock. And on the bottom right is the Spire of Dublin, further up on O’Connell Street, by Peter Guthrie.

Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday (full text and video of the speech) was an historic moment, the most direct attention to race and racism from any major Presidential candidate. Speaking in the way he did was an intelligent, courageous, and moral act in an atmosphere of sound bites and back-biting. I don’t know whether it helps or hurts his campaign, but it should help the country.

I saw three main points in the speech, with my comments in brackets:

1. “Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.” [Prejudices against those who speak different languages, profess different religions, have different values, or simply look different, are a major problem. However, the legacy of slavery, segregation, and continuing discrimination against Blacks has made that form of racism a defining feature of US history. It's our biggest challenge, one no other country faces in the same way.]
2. “Not this time.” [Racism in its historical forms not only continues to undermine our best impulses; it spreads and poisons other issues such as how we address immigration or how we interact with other countries. We need to move the discourse forward this time, to transcend race in a deep way, if we are ever to form "a more perfect union."]
3. “We cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together.” [We can't do #2 if we don't address #1.]

Some people express what they know about the pernicious effects of racism in ways that are divisive or factually wrong. In so doing, they fuel the very ignorance and hatred that underly racism. By not acknowledging the possibility of change, they effectively block it. That was Obama’s response to some of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments.

Others ask, “why not just be color blind?”, essentially ignoring the reality of racism. In response to that, Obama said that race is an issue; we need to work to make it not so, but that requires understanding and facing it.

Obama’s speech wasn’t a scholarly critique, but he managed to show for those ready to listen why we need to understand and confront racism. Only then can we work together to build a different kind of society, and bring the focus to issues such as education, health care, and the economy.

Be sure to read Part I: Stepping into a photo story, before this part.

In a recent classroom visit, I saw many of the benefits of digital storytelling: The students were active and deeply involved in learning; they were developing literacy and technology skills; they were building confidence in themselves as learners and as responsible young people. It was a contemporary version of a Froebel classroom. But something happened on one visit that’s made me think again about how we all inquire and learn.

As I described in Part I, the students were asked to write about their first memory. Their stories involved family, religion, play, travel, money, holidays, toys, and other elements of childhood today. As I went from student to student I saw some interesting variations, but nothing too surprising. Then, I encountered Z.

Who is Santa?

Whereas other students had written several lines already and eagerly allowed me to photograph their texts, Z had written nothing. I aksed her whether she had a memory to write about. My paraphrase loses the full force of her story, but perhaps conveys the spirit:

When I was four years old, I heard my parents talking about Santa, but I didn’t believe it. So the night before Christmas, I waited until they’d gone to sleep, then went downstairs. I unwrapped all of the presents, including those meant for my brothers and sisters and played with all of them. Then I took the presents upstairs and hid them in my wardrobe. The next morning my Ma and Dad came and said that Santa didn’t come because I’d been bad. “And where did you put all those presents?!”

Z went on, and I wish I could have recorded her performing. I told her she had a great story, even though I secretly thought that hers might not be as faithful to the truth as the ones her classmates were writing. So, I encouraged her to write it down as the others were doing: “Let me know when you have something written and if you like, I’ll photograph yours as well.”

As L and I went around the room, we talked with each student and photographed their writing. Meanwhile, Z seemed to do the same. She was up and about more than she was sitting writing. She’d be talking to a friend, looking at the photos on their laptop, or generally enjoying herself.

I came back to her several times to ask about her writing. She assured me that she wanted to have it photographed, and I promised that I’d do that as soon as she’d written something. But each time there was animated talk, but very little writing. By the end of the class she had written some (see photo), but it was less than that of most of her classmates and certainly didn’t do justice to the oral form.

What kind of camera is that?

One time she stopped me:

Z: What kind of camera is that?

Me: It’s a Canon. Why do you ask?

Z: My uncle has one like that. Have you seen the kind with the picture that comes out the bottom?

Me: Oh, you mean a Polaroid? Those are fun because you get the printed picture right away.

This conversation continued into different kinds of cameras, how cameras work, and why we have different buttons on the cameras. It was genuine inquiry growing out of lived experience, as Dewey might have described. But it didn’t reside in the classroom inquiry frame. The classroom story line was that students were inquiring through the photostory activity and that I was there to document what they did. They and the teacher were the performers on the classroom stage and I was the spectator, using my notepad and camera to speak to a larger audience. Our roles were clear:

students: photostory activity and materials

L and I: observing activity with notepad, camera

But Z would have none of that. She was just a sometime participant in the photostory activity and like Bertold Brecht, felt perfectly at home “breaking the fourth wall.”

What are you doing here?

Once I came back to see her and she asked:

Z: Why are you here? What are you doing here?

Even more than with the camera incident, I felt that she was challenging our assigned roles, breaking the fourth wall again. I was the spectator, the questioner. She was supposed to be the performer, the respondent. Who was she, a ten-year-old, to disrupt that established order?

But Z deliberately disrupted, albeit in a gentle way. It was genuine questioning, as Socrates or Mme. Curie might have done. No other student had questioned my presence or activity. They accepted as in the natural order of things that a stranger could be observing them and their teacher, asking questions, and taking notes or photos. Whether they didn’t think to ask or were inhibited from asking, I can’t say, but it’s interesting to note that by the age of ten, we’re nearly all so ready to accept that kind of surveillance. But not Z.

me: I’m here to look at this kind of activity and to see what children learn from doing it. Are you learning from it? What do you think you’re learning?

The standard answers to my question here are as I’ve suggested above: Becoming deeply involved in learning; developing literacy and technology skills; building confidence and learning to be responsible. Many ten-year-olds are able to articulate ideas along those lines. But Z was different.

Z: I’m learning to improve my memory.

Reading the world

Well, of course! The day’s activity was framed in terms of “your first memory.” Writing about it and looking at photographs was obviously a way to reinforce and enhance that memory. I just hadn’t thought of ten-year-olds as needing to improve their memories, even though, on reflection, I believe that being able to articulate and express memories is something we do learn how to do. Z had moved to the heart of the activity. Moreover, her compelling oral rendition was her own way to do that improvement.

The photo story activity helps fulfill Friedrich Froebel’s vision of educating the whole child by enlisting imagination, the body, and all of the senses, as well as the mind, in exploring the world. Children participating in the photo story activity did this in a way that would have pleased Froebel. But Z did it even more, by stepping out of the photo story.

Was it the fear of having more Zs enter the world that made the Prussian court in 1851 issue a ban on Froebel’s kindergarten idea?

I’m not sure what this all means. Z’s inquiry is situated, reflective, critical, and connected to experiences in her life beyond the school. It’s also rebellious. Imagine a classroom full of Z’s. Her teacher says she’s a handful. Would anything ever get done? Imagine a society of Z’s. Would so many things go unquestioned?

“Ζει” in Greek means “he lives.” It’s a protest slogan referring to the democratic politician Gregoris Lambrakis, whose assassination in 1963 inspired the novel and film, Z. Whatever one might say about our Z’s writing or her ability to focus on the classroom task at hand, it’s indisputable that she lives and that her inquiry is attuned to the world in way that could be a lesson for any of us.I’m of course intrigued to see Z’s final product and wonder where she’ll go next.

I’ve recently observed a number of classrooms doing variants of the photo story idea, in which drawings, graphics, or photos are used as the skeleton for a digital story. Such a story may also include written text, audio narration, music, sound effects, and various visual effects. While the students are producing their individual photo stories, I feel that I’m watching the photo story of the whole classroom. I become an engaged spectator, stepping into that photo story, eager to see what they might do next.

Working on personal memoirs

You would be pleased to have your ten-year-old daughter enrolled in Ms. C’s class. The teacher was caring, there were ample resources for learning, and there was even a special teacher in the school who provided IT support and professional development (Ms. D).

On the day L and I visited, the students were working on personal memoirs in digital story form. Each student had her own project, which was built around photos, ideally including baby pictures up to the present. Students could borrow a digital camera to take additional photos at home or within the school. Each student also had the use of a laptop on which she could store photos and assemble them into a photo story with a written narrative.

The class had learned about how to tell a story using pictures, words, and music. On this day, they were working on their story boards. This involved selecting photos, sketching each one, and writing a description. There was a storyboard handout with boxes for each of six photos plus descriptions. Ms. D explained that in a later class she would record each of them reading their scripts aloud and then incorporate that recording into the photo story.

Our earliest memory

Ms. D talked about memories and what our earliest memory might be. She pointed out that we sometimes think we remember something because we’ve been told about it many times or seen a video about it, but we may not have remembered it directly. She then led the children in a brainstorming activity about their earliest memory. Students called out what they believed to be their first memory—a family holiday, First Holy Communion, a trip they took.

Each student then began writing their account of that first memory. I was impressed with how much nearly everyone seemed to be engaged with the writing and cared about getting it just right. L and I moved about the room, talking to the students about these memories and photographing their developing texts.

The texts they wrote were short, but heartfelt and entirely appropriate for the overall project. For example:

My Holy communion

I remember my first Holy communion when I went out for my dinner and went to my uncles and auntys and I got lots of money and when I came back from my auntys and uncles I went home and got dressed into a tracksuit I left my money in and I went out to play with all of my friends after I played and I went up to stay in and watch the tv and the next day I went out to get clothes and toy and I had lots of clothes and toy and I had lots of money left. and I got a cross with my first Holy communion on it

or, from another student:

I rember when I was at my aunts wedding. I was only 4 years old. We were playing chasing and we ran under the table and knock down all the drink. It was very funny but we got into trouble.

Several students had even longer reminiscences. They clearly saw the activity as a way to connect real lived experiences with a creative school project.

Froebel’s gifts and occupations

Ms. C had learned about teaching in a college whose curriculum was built on the ideas of Friedrich Froebel. This 19th-century German educator, and founder of kindergarten, believed that humans are essentially creative, able to learn through active engagement with the world and appreciation of beauty. These ideas followed from a reverence for the child and the significance of play for learning. Froebel encouraged the creation of learning environments that involved practical work, which he called occupations, and the direct use of materials (such as shaped wooden bricks), which he called gifts.

Froebel would have approved of this photo story project. He honored the capacity of people to create and learn at an early age. Here, they were also reflecting on their own earliest learning. Students were engaged with real stuff in their homes and the school. They were actively creating what would become beautiful stories of their own lives. Ms. C understood this and believes that the photo story project is beneficial for her students. She sees how they learn about how to use new technologies, such as the digital camera, the scanner, the laptop, the web, as well as develop literacy skills, such as how to devise a storyline or compose captions. Students also become successful problem solvers and learn to take responsibility for the equipment, which they can take out of the school.

I agree with Mr. F and Ms. C about this wonderful class. As I said above, I would be pleased to have my own child be a part of it. My story might end there. But something happened in that class, which made me think again about play, children, learning, teaching, and inquiry.

Stay tuned for the next installment: Part II: Stepping out of a photo story.

We went to the organic market at the St. Andrews Resource Centre today, to get some healthy, fresh produce. We also enjoyed a hearty lunch of lentil soup and samosas.

After several visits, I can say that the Centre is one of the best-run and most beneficial community centres that I’ve seen. In addition to the market, there are employment services, tutoring for secondary school students (grinds), adult education, computer training, parenting and young mothers programmes, and welfare rights counseling. There’s a Heritage project to record the history of the Pearse St. community and many others projects (see below).

The elegant building was opened as the St. Andrew’s School in 1895 and operated as such until 1976 due to the decline of the working docklands. A renovation began in 1985, which led to the social centre opening on Bloomsday, 1989. The structure is well-preserved and there are colorful murals in the hallways and the back courtyard.

Staff are drawn from the community, so that the centre’s work tends to directly reflect community needs. Concurrently, community members develop skills that help their own careers. The latest count is 224 staff on full or part-time status.

The Centre has learned several lessons that might be useful elsewhere:

• Issues and programs develop out of needs identified by the community. There’s bottom-up planning rather than solutions from on high.
• There’s a concerted effort to build capacity in the community. For individuals, there’s an advancement path through community work.
• There’s a flat organizational structure, which allows quick and flexible response to needs. A corollary is an openness to the process. Staff learn to find workarounds to barriers.
• There’s a self-sustaining budgetary model. There’s no one paymaster and staff grows in response to funding.
• The Centre provides integrated services, a “one-stop shop.” This applies across the life cycle from the childcare center through Day Centre with meals for the elderly. Activities such as the Cyber-Links centre coordinate with others, such as the theatre project to present drama written and acted by community members.
• Staff and community members care about the Centre. Pride in the Centre is evident: There’s no grafitti and there appear to be limited security concerns. The display of figures brought in by children in the Childcare programme is just one tangible piece of evidence for this.
• There’s a forward thinking, needs-directed process, which identifies opportunities for funding consistent with community needs, capabilities, and processes.