Super Secret Society

It's been a while since I've published my thoughts on this blog, having spent the past few years focused on supporting teachers in my local community.  Today, I'm reaching out to my online colleagues to share an idea I'm hatching this week, in support of students who are feeling lonely and disconnected.


Where Have Our Children Gone?

While no one was paying attention, a large proportion of our teen community has decided that free time is meant to be spent alone, in private, with a glowing screen.  Whether connecting on social media, binge-watching video, or playing video games, our young people have retreated to their bedrooms.  I'll wager that you, or parents you know, are wondering what happened to their children.   Whether interacting on their mobile phones or portable computers, the most connected generation of all time, seems to lack for opportunities to engage in a face-to-face context. The steady diet of dopamine and serotonin, induced through follows, likes and comments, seems to have stifled the urge for physical interactivity that used to characterize the lives of teens.

And now, in school districts across North America, adults are trying to get a grip on how to engage young people in helping themselves.  The term 'mental health strategy' has become and education obsession as educators, parents and community members attempt to fix what's wrong with a generation that seems to be withdrawing from traditional society.  Never before has a generation of learners cried out so loudly for help with their social and mental well being.


The Birth of a Secret Society

As I sat in a large group planning meeting last week, student success teams from our local high schools attempted to make practical sense of the guides and supports that were available to school communities.  Action plans were drafted to be shared with our board level student success leaders, and a follow-up was promised.

While this work was underway, Jane McGonigal's book 'Reality is Broken' began rattling around in my brain.  During my drive to/from school, I had recently finished reading the audio version of the book and I was inspired by the ways in which game mechanics were being leveraged to increase social engagement, to connect co-conspirators, and to solve problems.  Long story short: before leaving the meeting, I had purchased a domain name, created new social media accounts, and had a draft in my mind for a new community-building game to be called 'Super Secret Society',

Meaningful Missions + Human Interactions = Joy.  

This is the secret sauce for the Super Secret Society.  I believe that ordinary days, spiced with a positive community extra... can become extraordinary. The semi-mysterious logo was designed by blending S+S+S into a symbol that is reminiscent of that doohickey we once needed to play 45 RPM records.  The symbol is circular, representative of how positive behaviours might be 'paid forward'. What goes around comes around. My hope is that others will find themselves engaging in socially generous behaviors that are sparked by thoughtful missions.

What type of missions are you talking about?
With a goal of creating a culture at our school that is based on friendliness and personal engagement, the missions that I'm collecting for broadcast can be characterized as fun (wear mis-matched socks); interactive (take time to notice the eye colour of your friends); challenging (stand up against an unnecessary use of vulgar or hateful language); generous (share something from your lunch with someone you've not shared with before); habit-forming (hold the door open for at least 5 different people today).

Who participates?
The missions will vary in difficulty depending on one's personality and comfort with social interaction.  In general, tasks can be accomplished by anyone young/old; student/teacher; parent/child.  Without realizing it, other community members are also participating.  The more a person takes on challenges, the easier future missions will seem, and the more connected an individual will become to those in the community.

How does one discover the day's mission?
Missions are posted on Twitter, Instagram.  Participants can access the missions by following supersecretsoci on either platform.  Only those who follow will have access to the missions.  The group is top secret after all! (For those without social media accounts, the missions will also be posted openly on Pinterest.)

How are missions accomplished?
Missions are accomplished in secrecy!  Don't let on why you're doing any particular task... just complete the assigned missions and enjoy the fruits of your labour.  To accept a mission, simply click the like button/heart icon to confirm that you've received the instructions.  If you'd like to document your achievement, each day's mission has a matching hashtag that can be used to share your personal experience.

What's the payoff?
The payoff for individual participation is positive human interaction.  The payoff for school or family participation, is the fostering of a collegial community climate.

Can I tell other people?
Since there is a bit of joy at figuring out that the society exists, my hope is that hashtags appearing in the posts of game players might spark the curiosity of new players.  "What was that sock photo with the #sss0001 tag all about?"  There will be times when a mission will ask agents to gather co-conspirators but if you know of individuals or groups who would make good agents, please share a link to supersecretsociety.ca  . Perhaps at your school, the logo, posted conspicuously, and paired with a QR code can be used as a cue to induce the curiosity of potential agents.

What if I have an idea to share?
If you have an idea for a super secret mission, please share your idea.  Inspire people you'll never know, to interact in positive ways.  Together, we can create ripples of friendliness, fun, and fulfillment.




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Creating a Community QR Poster

One of the first community publishing projects we undertook in my 'learning strategies' class, was to produce a large QR code that will eventually hyperlink to our class website.  Our poster will be 29 pixels square to match our master QR image. If your students use one inch pixels, the group will produce an image almost two and a half feet wide. (Our final poster will be a bit larger than that.)

Step 1: Create a QR code that links to a classroom web page.  I used MobileFish QR Code Creator because it allows the user to specify the size of the first printed image.

Step 2: Decide on a way to cut the code into pieces so that each student can take on a part of the project.  With 16 high needs students in my class, I began our project by breaking our code into 16 equally sized unique squares.

Step 3: Enlarge each student's piece of the puzzle so that the individual pixels can easily be seen and organized.  I enlarged each of the pieces to fit on full sheet of letter-sized paper.

Step 4 (Option 1): Provide each student with a piece of the puzzle. You might elect to print a puzzle grid template on which each student might recreate his/her pixels.  Just make sure the grid is filled with enough fairly precise squares.

 

Step 4 (Option 2): As an alternative, you can simply have each student produce a set number of dark squares that can be added to a master grid by a select team of students.  So long as the black pixels are composed of images that appear dark when viewed from a distance, the code should work.

Step 4 (Option 3): Instead of puzzle pieces, cut your QR code into strips, providing each student with a binary strip composed of black and white squares.  This solution would work wonderfully for a class composed of 29 students!

Step 5: I asked each student to complete images that represented their favourite things, their talents, and their goals for this school year.  For some, it took a long time to develop a list of words or icons that could most apty represent each individual's uniqueness. (It took even longer for students to produce clean dark images with black Sharpie pens.)

Step 6: Put it all together.  With our QR puzzle being completed on a part time basis, we hope to have a final poster ready in a week or so.

Community projects like this one call for each student to demonstrate some commitment to the collective.  The resulting symbol demonstrates to others that the unified group is made up of many uniquely talented individuals.  While we used hand-drawn sketches, I'm confident that a similar project that uses coloured squares of paper, photographs or images cut from magazines, can yield a similarly effective symbol of class unity.

Do You Create Dolphin Bubbles?

Surely you create dolphin bubbles!
You're a creative person who is reading this because you love to learn, and you thrive on creating rich learning experiences for yourself and for others.

I came across this video courtesy of a tweet by Joe Evans. It reminds me that in creating original content, we do so as members of a community. Once created, do we keep our original content to ourselves, or do we celebrate, share, and honour our work by giving it away?



I'll think of my work on innovative projects as 'dolphin bubbles' for the next little while, and will do my best to be more generous than these captive dolphins are with their creations. While they are inventive with limited means, and are great at learning from one another, these dolphins can still learn a few things about sharing and Creative Commons!

Pssst! Please don't tell the dolphins that their actions have been videotaped, or the we may find ourselves in a situation...
See Larry Lessig's recent tweet!

Summer Fun with Seesmic

I've been thinking, writing, and speaking of late about the fourth 'R'... Relationship; and I can see how Seesmic has the potential to personalize participation in any of a number of learning networks.

Educators (and their classes) can now leverage microphones and cameras to participate in engaging asynchronous conversations on a range of topics. Care to test it out?

Twitter in the News

The micro-blogging tool, Twitter, has become a key social networking tool for educators. It's become so popular, that even Google has created a Twitter plug-in.

Seemingly to justify the many tools that are evolving in support of twitterers, this tiny but mighty application continues to make headlines. To help tell a few recent stories (Rocketboom-Twitter-eBay anyone?), and to give an overview of this tool, I've created a twitter-sized (280 second) screencast video:

Community Learning in a New Year

A fresh start is never more than a number of weeks away if you work in a teaching & learning environment. A new school year, a new term, a new teacher... or in the case of tomorrow morning, the first day of school in the global 'New Year'. Over the holiday break, I had the opportunity to experience both good fortune and tragedy, but is was the latter that helped me to see this 2008 new year through new eyes.

The Kids are Alright. They may experience community differently than you and I, but their passions run deep, and their purposes are largely positive. With the Christmas Eve passing of a 15 year old friend of the family, I saw first hand how young people are leveraging Web 2.0 tools to share their grief. In fact, it was through the my 16 year old daughter's Facebook account that we came to know of the tragic loss of Michael whose family has grown up a few hours away. Michael will never be able to read the posts of his peers, but the tragedy of his loss is likely to be archived in the passionate posts of friends, classmates and relatives for a very long time.

It affirms for me that the youth of today, are by and large, responsible, compassionate and loving citizens; and the writings of 'random teens' reminds me that from within our evolving technological world, it is the people that matter the most. In the lives of netizens, the technology or the read/write web is a useful tool, but it is at its most powerful when it is used in the context of creating community.

So, here is a challenge for Teacher 2.0: Use available tools to broaden your learning communities. Make overt plans to involve others in your own professional work and in the work of your students. Reach out to the people that are important in the 'real world' lives of members of your learning community. Regardless of the stresses of school life in 2008, our humanity ties each of us to a number of communities of real people, whose impact on our lives is more significant than we realize. When we are engaged in learning that harnesses the power of these relationships, memorable, meaningful experiences can be the result for teachers and students alike!