Hello Fireside Learners! I've been away awhile but still drumming away to the beat of my own drummer. Finally relocated to Canada and settling into a year "off" but also starting up my own online school (Teaching technology and English). I hope now to finally participate more. Here's my first post. Really hope you'll find the time to think about these podcasts/thoughts of Illich - very pertinent to today's discourse and tension between a "standard" school system and the burgeoning…

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I am very excited about this meeting I had yesterday at my city's department of education. The department's leaders are dealing with the future of education and innovative education all the time. They are trying to keep up to date with trends, changes and innovations. They have begun an interesting process of innovation in Ramat-Gan, and as of yesterday I feel I have the honor to take a very small part in this process.



The city of Ramat-Gan is a city of 150,000 residents. It is right… Continue

Ben Grey raises one of the most fundamental questions regarding our present situation:

What are we doing for students accomplishing their most amazing feats of education outside the education system?

Information has become decentralized.… Continue

In a comment at Sarah's blog,Intrepid Flame sums up where my head has been for about half a month. The real job is lighting fires among colleagues without burning them.

How can we slowly encourage people (teachers) to understand that the future is here with a sense of urgency, but at the same time not allow them to become defensive?

This is almost exactly… Continue

You don't say...



I lived in an off-campus apartment with three other students across 113th Street from Butler Library during my junior year at Columbia. I'd often run home between classes, to eat lunch, to pick up a laundry bag to take to the cleaners, or for some other practical reason. Occasionally, on my way into the building, I would run into the super, a loquacious, graying African-American fellow, who always wore the same blue overalls and baseball cap no matter the season and… Continue