Exciting Possibilities

I just got home from a few days in Colby kansas. I always love visiting the schools and educators in this unique city and am energized by the conversations that I get to have. They call me out to be a part of an ideation process a few times a year and it is usually an intense process. This district employs people in leadership that really work hard to bring new tools to their learners and empower them to be successful.

The first thing you notice about Colby is that the town is West, very West. Being out this far toward the edge of the state and somewhat distant, depending on how far you are accustomed to driving, means getting used to a particular lifestyle. Locals will tell you they don’t have much in the way of cultural experiences and shopping choices but what they do have is a commitment to doing right by their learners.

I love the truck stop there too, not only because they have a Starbucks but because it has the feel of an airport with people coming and going steadily as they head out toward Colorado, California or Eastern locales. Out front are a number of fake palm trees that look real save for the wires used to keep them upright in the stiff Kansas breeze.

I usually work with the charter schools in Colby. It is called the Thomas County Academy and it has the mission of preparing kids for the 21st century while allowing them to be self-directed learners. They work with a population of creative learners who don’t easily fit in regular classrooms. I see the place, housed inside the public middle school, as a petri-dish and a research center. They are empowered to try non-traditional teaching styles and Diana Wieland, the district curriculum director is dedicated to making sure that new and innovative practices, piloted in this environment, find their way into classrooms across the district.

One this visit, we were strategizing about the best ways to use new resources derived from two grants from the Kansas State Department of Education. One grant is a dissemination grant, geared toward smoothing the path of new approaches from the charter to other classrooms and the other grant, called "Project Connect" holds the potential to really make a strong impact on the educational world.

As I work with schools across the state of Kansas and in other states, I see many isolated models that are exciting and effective, models that empower kids with technology tools and project-based approaches that inspire life-long learning but the one weakness I always see is isolation. The educational system seems to struggle to open borders classroom to classroom much less from school to school. Project connect is the brain child of Diana Wieland and Ginger Lewman, the director of the face to face program at Turning Point Learning Center in Emporia Kansas. The idea is to seamlessly allow teachers and learners to collaborate daily using Skype, wikis, Google Docs, spreadsheets, blogs, podcasts, the Kan-Ed Empowered Desktop, a polycom and much more. When I think of the potential combination of project-based learning, 21st century tools and skills, open non-geographically contingent collaboration and the resources to make things happen, I have trouble sleeping, thinking of the possibilities.

Our initial meetings have involved brain storming ways to ensure our systems translate and that units or projects designed will have utility for each school so that new units can reside and grow in a database that can be shared between charter schools. In the future, the goal is to build a network of charter schools who collaborate and cooperate daily to the very positive effect of empowering learners to work in the world in the ways that the world currently works. Could this model work for all schools? Of course it could. As walls disappear and educators start to connect their learning environments to those of other educators world-wide, kids will start to see a bigger picture of success on an ever-shrinking globe.

The first step is relationship building between educators and the establishing of trust. This very human trust issue is often evident when teams in different locations begin to open their thinking and ultimately their passions to other people. I am very excited and fortunate to have a ringside seat in all of this. I love education and educators who are brave enough to take chances to improve education for the learners they have as well as the learners of the future.