California Dreamin’ by Rob Darrow

Today we were given the afternoon off to explore the plaza and different mercados in Cuenavaca. The plaza always seems filled with people with vendors and entertainers. The mercado I visited which is next to the Hernando Cortes palace/museum was filled with a variety of wares. It also gave me an opportunity to talk in Spanish without anyone else with me. It is frustrating and a bit frightening at times to not know the language well enough to communicate what I’m thinking.  The emotional part of me wants to be able to understand and speak the language right now. However, the intellectual part of me understands it takes years to master a language and that immersion in the language is the best way to learn it.  If only we could all go live in the country of the language we were studying…

Overall, this gives me a sense of what it must be like for the students who come into our schools from another country only speaking their native language.  And, we treat students who speak languages other than English is different ways.  The learning continues…

estudiantes de espanol

In Cuernavaca, there are 14 of us who are learning together. We are learning the Spanish language as well as the culture and history of Mexico. Each day begins with the language class, which fills up most of the morning. Then there is a short talk about some aspect of Mexican history and then we walk to see examples of what has been discussed or learned that day. Two days ago we learned about shopping in our language class, then we heard about the importance of the “Mercado” or free market economy in Mexico, and then we went to the Mercado to experience it first hand.

After the first day, we were divided into two language learning groups: the beginners and the advanced. The advanced group are mostly people who grew up speaking Spanish while the beginning group did not. In each group are students who range in age from 15 to 60 and we are all learning together. Our beginning group has been assigned homework each night and last night I needed a little help, which I got from the 15-year-old. Our diverse ages cause the discussions to be rich and informative, with each person contributing their knowledge and experience. In formal education – at the K-12 level – there are few times when there are multiple ages in a classroom. Of course, back in the early days, there was the one room schoolhouse where there were a variety of ages. Here, this type of learning has been an advantage to me – interacting with people of all ages and hearing about their experiences in the context of learning language, culture and history.

I am part of a study trip to Cuernavaca with CSU Fresno.  Our group of 14 will be in Cuernavaca for the month of July learning the language, history and culture.

Our group blog is here.  Ongoing pictures by our group are here.

Central Plaza en Cuernavaca

Here I am in Cuernavaca for our first day in the central plaza.

In the past month, several reports have been published about online learning that confirm the growth of online learning and open source online content at the K-12 level.  As I have written in this blog, the book, “Disrupting Class” predicts that by 2019, 50% of courses taught in high school will be online.  These reports and actions support the thesis of this book and many others:

• The Department of Education released the report, “Evaluation Online Learning, Challenges and Strategies for Success.”  Article in Ed Week.

• NCES released this report entitled,  “Technology-Based Distance Education Courses for Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 2002-2003 and 2004-2005“

• The JISC infoNet, the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and the Higher
  Education Academy released this study, “Exploring Tangible  Benefits from ELearning.”

• Teacher as CoLearners is part of the new ISTE NETS standards.

• Curriki Expands to include content from Education Development Center.  (Curriki)

• K-12 content now on iTunes U.

• Sun Microsystems launches  open source virtual classroom, “Project Wonderland.”

Happy reading.

I thoroughly enjoyed participating in NECC from afar since I could not attend in person.

No doubt, the conference organizers and others question how much to share with the world and how much to keep private.  Many recent business and educational book publications (The World is Flat, A Whole New Mind, The Long Tail, Wikinomics, and Disrupting Class) have suggested that the power of business is in sharing and services.  I am glad that the NECC conference has become more open because listening from afar only makes me want to attend in person in the future.  I know I missed the dinners, the one-to-one networking, the exhibits and re-connecting with colleagues and meeting new people by not attending in person, but listening from afar DID cause me to feel connected to those who did attend face-to-face.  I hope other educational and library conferences will do the same!  Keep up the great work, NECC!

For those of you who may want to catch up on the happenings from NECC, here are some links that will cause you to listen and read and think…

• NECC Ning
• NECC unplugged
• NECC Live (now recorded and archived)

Blog Posts to read:

• Joyce Valenza
• Wesley Fryer
• Chris Lehman

Or do a search for NECC 2008 in YouTube or Ustream or Flickr or Google or …

If you like this kind of learning, plan to attend the K-12 Online Conference in October.  (It’s free).