 So thank you everyone for coming. I should mention before we get started that it is being recorded this evening, so if you have something that you don't want recorded, maybe don't say it. And first I want to say thank you to the Berkman Center for sponsoring this event. I think it's something that I know is happening all over campus, good thinking about digital media, about learning and about what it means for schools, and I know there are a lot of people here from all over, from public schools in the area, from the ed school, from all over. So I'm really excited to have the conversation after the film. So I want to start by just saying a few words and then we're just going to get right into it. I could say in a very blanket way that kids learn differently online. The web gives them unprecedented access to networks of people, places and things. And online and increasingly offline they can make, remake and remix the culture around them. So tonight we focus on the affordances of this new learning, putting aside for a moment the challenges of distraction, of violence, of social pressure and other sorts of social ills, so often associated with young people and media. So we refocus the lens on kids inventing, making and engaging the world around them. And we ask, is school enough? Can schools in their present form accommodate this new learning and is that desirable? So tonight's program is in two parts. First we'll watch a wonderful new documentary that explores the questions of what, when and how kids learn and informally and with new forms. And then we'll have a discussion led by a panel that features not only the producer of the documentary, Steve Brown, but an esteemed group of people from the Berkman Center and some of the remarkable young people featured in the film. So I'll introduce our panel after the 50 minute documentary and we'll also have other people that are nearby that I'll call on and ask for your input. It's not really going to be a panel discussion as much as it's going to be a discussion with everybody in the room, so please start thinking and let's get this conversation going. So for now please sit back and relax and enjoy the 50 minute film. Well I want to ask my panel, our panel to come up here. And just as the panel is more like a backboard, springboard, let's say, to throw ideas at and we'll see what happens. So let me just introduce everybody very quickly and we also have other people that I want to introduce as well, but if you can get on these strangely high chairs. I forgot to introduce myself, I apologize for that. My name is Eric Gordon, I'm a fellow at the Berkman Center this year. And so I'll introduce from this side. This is Sandra Cortesi, she's the lead fellow of the Youth and Media Project at the Berkman Center. Ray Yonko is sitting right next to her. He is a faculty associate at the Berkman Center this year as well. And Urs Gasser is the executive director at the Berkman Center. So it's great to have those voices here on the panel. And then we have Sierra Goldstein, who you all know, who needs no introduction. She's sitting on the panel and then Steve Brown, the director and producer of the documentary we just saw tonight. Those people are all sitting up here and I'm going to ask them a few questions. But I also, before we start, I want to introduce also on this side, we have Xavier and Monica and Alex. I just want to... Also we have Xavier over here, teacher Xavier over here also. So I want to start off the conversation tonight with just a simple provocation to the panel. And I have each person say just a very, very quick response to this. And then I'll actually turn to you guys as well if you're willing. But is school enough? Let's start with you, Steve. Well, I guess for me it's more than a rhetorical question. You might be able to tell from the program. No, I don't think so. I'm not sure it's at its fault, but I think there's so much more that kids want to do and can do that should be included as part of an education. And I think opportunities there for teachers and classrooms to include more of it relatively easily. I can tell you from my personal experience and from interacting with other kids in my community that a lot of the times it's not. We want to be able to as youth go out there and make a difference and follow our dreams which we're always told as kids you should follow your dreams and in that situation a lot of the time they get shot down. And that can be very, very confusing. And so it's really nice to be able to go outside of those walls and try new things and figure out your passions. And again, personally from interacting with other kids, it's been a lot more beneficial and empowering to do that than sitting in a classroom for eight hours. Thank you. Two quick remarks to start with. First of all, I've never been sitting so close to a movie star, which is amazing. And secondly, I've never imagined a more formal setting to discuss informal learning, so I really hope you can open that up relatively quickly. Is school enough? My answer would be no, but I would add a provocation back by saying what schools are even more important than ever before. And I think there are three reasons. The first reason was mentioned before and also stated nicely by Henry Jenkins in the documentary. There's a huge window of opportunity, I think. For schools to actually build bridges to other contexts of learning, social and informal spaces of learning. And many teachers and some of them actually in the room here are doing already great work to improve learning, to make learning more interest driven, more community oriented, more relevant. So I think it's worth later on to look quite closely at the different stories that we've seen because some of them one could argue happened actually at schools already. The second quick remark is our observation along these lines. We have seen wonderful success stories in this documentary, but of course we also know that there are challenges we're dealing with digital divides and participation gaps along socioeconomic inequalities across the country. And that is quite troublesome because not everyone has the kind of settings and support structures we've seen tonight. Even again, looking more closely at how many mentors and coaches you have seen here, we shouldn't take that for granted, I guess. So there are challenges as much as I of course love the narrative and also agree on the promise. And the third point ultimately why I think schools are more important than ever has to do with the basic literacy is much of, I think, what we've seen here happening, especially as far as the use of technology is concerned, also builds upon the ability to read and write and express yourself. And some of these skills obviously are deeply connected to school learning and will likely continue to be connected for a long time. So again, I think school continues to be extremely irrelevant. What we have is a great opportunity to build from both sides and connect to learning indeed. I agree with a lot of what you said, and I think that that last statement by Henry Jenkins was a great one about needing to connect what's happening outside of the classroom into the classroom and that learning should be connective, it should be a social process, it should strive to be as engaging as possible. And certainly there are the issues of needing to focus on basic skills but also focus on other skills that we might not consider basic but that I might consider basic like interpersonal skills and conflict resolution and how to work with people and how to collaborate and things like that. And when I say that, I don't mean that we need even more standards because that just kind of makes me shiver a bit when we think about adding more standards. I think that the policy right now is pretty misguided in that there needs to be a lot of teaching to a test. And that one size fits all certainly will reach that 68% in the middle but it doesn't really allow for the ones that for students who need something a little different and I'm certainly in agreement there about the participation gap in both engagement and in technology use. And I think that and that's some of my research that we need to focus on how students are using technology in the real world, meeting them where they are in educational settings and encouraging education through the use of newer technologies and not shying away from that, how we're currently doing in K through 12. So I think the, excuse me, I think the movie does a wonderful job at showing the different ways how you can support and excite students about the things they in a way wanted to learn. I think one of the challenging questions is also how can you support schools, students and teachers to learn and teach the things that are maybe a little bit less fun to learn and maybe going back to your provocation, one of the policy questions I think could be how can students connect to school if it's such a controlled environment? Okay, great. I want to see if there's anybody who wants to just jump in at this at this moment to go out to the to the audience right now to either respond to that question or or to or to dig deeper into some of the some of the issues that were brought up in the documentary. Yes. There's a little there's a microphone in the back. Actually, you can press a little red button. Yeah, Sarah. Can I ask you a question? Absolutely. I'm an elementary teacher. I have parents that do not understand letting their children go free on the internet. And it's a real concern. How do you keep your child safe? How did you overcome that with your parents to let you reach beyond the norm and step outside those walls as you spoke of? Well, sorry. I, you know, there was obviously there was a lot of trust involved because it can be very scary. I mean, as I've had many conversations with my parents to let your kid, as you said, go out and sort of put themselves out there, especially in that digital social media world and to try new things that necessarily haven't been done before. And it really took a lot of I would say communication checking in with them and letting them know what I was doing and having them be an active part of everything that I was doing. So it wasn't necessarily like I was out there by myself doing these things. It was, yes, I was out there and I was putting myself out there, but my parents were with me. They were, you know, my support system and they knew what I was doing and who I was talking to. So they were really a huge part of it. And so they got to see firsthand what I was doing. And, you know, we would talk about it every night, what I was doing that day, what I wanted to do. So there was a lot of active and purposeful communication involved in that process. How did you find those initial resources to start that communication? What do you mean by resources? Well, how did you know where to go and look to start sharing that information with your parents? Did you have a school mentor that said that there was resources out there? I was a part of the BU Innovation Lab, which is a sort of program that allows kids to learn per passion. Okay. And my parents were definitely an active part of talking with Monica, who we saw on the documentary about, you know, how this self-directed work, how this self-directed program worked and, you know, resources. I mean, yeah, so they were a huge part of how this, you know, self-directed program worked and they were always, you know, going to meetings with me and they got to see, you know, firsthand everything I was doing from meeting with my mentors on Skype, you know, as you saw my mom was sitting right next to me or, you know, going to coffee shops and meeting with my mentors. So they got to see all the educational steps I was taking, which really made them feel like they were even more of an active part of my education than they ever were when I was in school. Because when I was in school, you know, they would drop me off, have a great day and then pick me up and there wasn't much more after that. But with this, they really got to see, you know, what I was interested in, who I was talking to and even the type of learning that works for me. So they could be like, you know, Sierra, I noticed that you're interested in this and I've also noticed from being around you that you learn best this way and here's how I can help you. So they were, you know, just a complete active part of that. I wonder if I can actually call in Sierra's mom who's sitting back there to chime in on this. If there's anything you want to add, click that little red button on there. To the resource part, is that what you're trying to get to? I would say one of our mentors, too, was from a company called Room 214 and he taught Sierra a lot about social media, creating those Twitter accounts. She worked with Malika Chopra a lot about the blogging and blogs with intent. So it was a learning process. How did we initiate that conversation was a communication every day. There wasn't a one single defining moment. It was conversation every day and learning every day together, which really pushed us into well participating in her life on and it's a gift actually that we've been able to do that. So there was no defining resource out there, except for we looked out into the community and connected with geniuses in that community that can then help us create this learning experience. Does that help? So it seems like in one of the things that you said, Sierra, which is that your parents became more involved in your life when it was no longer just dropping you off at school. And that's just a nice way to frame it. And I wonder if we could talk a little bit about that kind of formal versus informal tension that we have here. And in some ways a lot of what we were talking, a lot of what was featured in this in this film are distractions. Traditionally, we would call them distractions. They come, they're apart from the goals of traditional education. And so how do those distractions get sort of re-centered? How do they or how do they become the center in your education? It was it seems extraordinary in the way that it happened. But I wonder if we can talk more broadly about about what the practicalities are of taking those things traditionally understood as distractions and then bringing them in to the this sort of structure of education. And if anybody on the panel has anything to say about that or anybody else? I'll comment. I mean, I actually wouldn't necessarily describe the things that we saw as distractions, although I understand why you why you would. The thing that we were trying to do in all of our stories and I mean, I'm sure you can tell already that it's not really about the individual's story as a success story that we're really trying to tell. It's really about how that story represents something bigger than that. Sierra's case, it's about how she's resourced the community and both on and offline to figure out what she wants to do to learn about what she do to learn about what she wants to do. She's really expanding her knowledge base to all these untapped resources that are both online and offline. But the to the issue of distraction. I mean, the other thing that we wanted to do is to show stories of kids doing really important work, which I think is often too often lacking in the classroom. I mean, they're asked to do work, certainly, but are they asked to do things that are important to people other than the classmates or the teacher? Are they asked to do things that are important to their community and so forth? So I guess I would say that our most important thing for us to tell was that all these kids were helping bring an elephant to Maine, which we all want an elephant in our hometown, I know, especially when it's only 1,000 people. They participated in this big discussion about what to do, what the problems are in public schooling in Boston, for example, and how to fix those, you know, how to make Warner Brothers use fair trade chocolate and so forth. So those aren't really distractions in the same way that say, you know, using text messaging or Facebooking or whatever kids are doing and so forth are distractions and the way that we view them that way, these are actually important things, more than just distractions. And I mean to your question of course, they're Eric. Oh, that's great. Thank you. Ray, you look like you want to say something. Yeah, you know I do. The whole idea about Facebook and social media is distractions. I guess I rile against and just not personally, not only personally, but in my research that we find that there are some great ways that we can use these tools in education. And what you mentioned before about how do you convince your parents? I think this is a larger kind of societal problem that we've somehow agreed that social technologies are time wasters at best and very evil or dangerous places at worst. And I think the media is also to blame for this because you get a lot of media hype about, you know, here's, let me show you what's bad, what's bad and what's bad. And I think that if I could summarize my research in one sentence, it would be that it's not about whether or not youth or students are using social technologies. It's about what they're doing on those social technologies. So, for instance, some of my research findings show that if kids are playing games on Facebook, right, Farmville, I'm so happy to have research results that show that Farmville and Mafia Wars are bad for you because, you know, I always hated them polluting my stream in Facebook anyway. But the point is that games like that actually have a negative effect on learning and a negative effect on engagement. Whereas things like checking in to see what your friends are doing, what kids call Facebook stalking or Facebook creeping, actually has a more positive effect. And we've also shown in experimental studies how you can integrate things like Twitter to get more positive learning outcomes. And Eric has done some of this work too. He's got a paper with some of the technology they developed for their classroom. And so I really riled against that idea that social technologies are bad. I think we need to figure out some ways to integrate them very effectively in education. Well, I think it's interesting that in our experience with the community planet, what became clear as we ran into some barriers as we always do whenever we use community planet and school systems, which is that the most social media is blocked. And so we couldn't get onto YouTube and we couldn't get onto Facebook and to do the things that we needed to do. And these guys got around it with a little help from their teacher. But yeah, right. So but it was amazing to watch. It was like what they did was they were producing amazing things. They needed access to YouTube in order to do it. And they did it in school and it's those kinds of that kind of learning that was going on because of social media are those are those examples of real product productive learning experiences where sort of sort of sledgehammer policies of just blocking social media is not necessarily the best way to go. So I don't know if you guys want to chime in, please. I'm Alex Jesus. I had a statement about you guys talking about control students how like standards and things like that. But I feel that that that is true but that is for people who who know what they want. Like I don't know what I want. So for me to for if my school was more geared for those who want to you know, express themselves freely and things like that. I feel like that's great because when you have a standard you're killing the potential you're killing what the kids could could have been and they would have chased the dream. But then again you put you put me in a position where I was forced to be in this class when I first started but then I realized I love you know, media. So but when I follow the standards and the guides I feel like you know that that isn't always the worst thing. I feel like we're we're talking a lot about people that know what they want and we're not talking enough about people who don't want who don't know what they want the average guy the average person who's applying to college and is going undecided or who doesn't want to go to college because maybe they're scared. I feel like I feel like we should always encourage kids to do what they want and you know and have the ability to to chase the dream but also we should also you know be able to give the kids who don't know what they want guidance and also meet mentors and try things I feel like we should be focusing a lot on that. If you I'd like to add something to that something that I've learned from doing this lab and something that I love that you said was experiment and I think that you know when kids don't know what they want to do they need the freedom to experiment with different things and you can't you know you're not brought into life knowing exactly what you want to do it takes life experiences and you know trying out different things to realize what your main passion is and then once you have that you can go out and you can find mentors and people that are doing those things that can help support you and you can have people to help support you through that experimentation in the documentary network of people who are you know giving you ideas of things to try or if you have an inch or you can go and try that thing and then you might not like it but then you might love it and then that's your passion and then you can do that and you know setting that standard doesn't allow kids to go out and do that and you know I feel that's very disempowering and so I just I loved that you said experimentation and that just is so so true to be able to figure out what you want to do yeah I'm curious what you think about the future of people making connections online where they never met that person before because it seems to me like the more technology gets into our personal lives the less people are comfortable just striking up conversations like people usually used to do more often and I'm curious like are people going to start meeting each other for the first time based on Twitter based on Facebook based on Skype or whatever and how do you see that playing out in the next five years well the assumption that people aren't striking up conversations anymore is not upheld in any of the research so the research absolutely shows that people who are communicating online are also communicating offline the idea of meeting strangers doesn't tend to happen that much either again the research shows that people who you're connecting with online are people who you have some kind of tie to the research calls those like the strong or the weak ties and and so in the future are people going to meet more and connect more online I would think so I mean I think I think that happens now for me professionally I meet people they'll they'll see my blog or they'll you know find me on Twitter and they'll say something about me or to me or about some of my work and then we'll end up meeting at a conference or it or some kind of form like this so so I I think that we'll probably see about the same maybe if we're you know kind of extending out 30 40 years when we have implants and you know we can access the internet by kind of blinking maybe that might be different but I don't think that's going to substantially change all that much in the near future so one thing to add maybe to that I also think that there is a big value in maybe having the those mentors or people online and not necessarily even meeting them offline that's throughout the movie you see a couple of times where online mentors played a big role and that's for example something how we could think about scaling mentorship could be a potential in there I think yes I just wanted to speak to the issue of using social media from learning because while I really appreciated the examples that were given in the film they're kind of cherry-picked and the average student isn't going to start their own business necessarily or their own video recording company and I'm kind of thinking about the comment made by the Boston English student here across the room of how about the child that's trying to find themselves and just as an anecdotal reference I have a child who's being home educated for high school and she's doing her education online using MIT's open source private extension and she's really used Facebook to help her define her career goals she found she wants to study neurobiology and she found a Facebook site in Australia body and mind another one called Neuro-Orthopedic Institute and then there's another Institute in London and she reads online articles that are published for free she could never do this at the public high school in our town and so I think I mean as we're looking at this school enough I think we're looking at ways to augment what school does not necessarily replace it but I'm particularly interested in bringing this back to the discussion of the panel up front how does one find the mentors that one needs to help direct this this educational process so if anybody who wants to speak to it especially I suppose Sierra because she's done this but I'm open to whatever anybody has to contribute thank you I just like to give one example actually I'm sorry I mean dollars that we worked on an additional story of this this girl she's 14 named Catherine who lives in Mount Pleasant Michigan and her she had this idea 14 that she wanted a Pontiac Fiero which I don't know if anybody knows what those are but they're around for four years in the first year they burned most of the time they caught on fire but they're very sporty to cedar and she wanted a Pontiac Fiero so she bought one for $450 and she's now with her father rebuilding this car and so she's got the engine spread out in the basement and the chassis is out in her uncle's garage and so forth but she created this forum on the there's a Fiero forum of course more than one she created this forum where basically she's been sort of crowdsourcing the resources that she needs to rebuild this car and like that's a you know that's a very simple and direct way of saying that if you're if you're interested in something there are thousands of people out there who are also interested in it and her more than willing to give you help in all sorts of ways about all sorts of arcane subjects like Pontiac Fierros so I mean that's and that's totally tied to learning and that's a believe me it's a big project that she's taking on she's welding she's rebuilding the engine she's doing all kinds of stuff and she's online her mentors are untapped resources all over the world I mean people in Australia people all over the country are saying to her I know what to do about that particular problem so they're finding her and then they're contacting her yeah they find the website yeah they talk in the in the forum and she's become known on the Fierro website because she's doing this extraordinary thing and she's 14 and so forth so that's you know it's it's like that you know you asked how because I've done this how I found my mentors online through social media and you know to me social media is a big web for all of us to connect and there's so many different avenues with the blogging and there's YouTube and Twitter and Facebook all these different things where all these people are putting out information and what I really did is I went out and looked for the information that I was interested in so say yoga for example so I would go and I would search you know yoga hashtags on Twitter and you know yoga teachers on Google and I would find these people and I would start following them religiously you know retweeting them following their blogs commenting and eventually you know you make enough of an impression that they start contacting you back and then you start creating those relationships and through those relationships mentoring naturally happens and so I've found a lot of my mentors from following their information putting out my own information and you know tweeting it to them saying hey here's my blog you know I really think we could connect read it and tell me what you think and because of that I've met some you know amazing mentors that have completely changed my life and I've been able to you know create a bigger voice I'm actually a frequent blogger on Malika Chopra's intent.com which has helped me connect with numerous people because it's such a big website so you know using social media to find mentors is actually quite easy and natural and then searching for information that means something to you so it's it's fairly easy and it's amazing the people you can meet from all around the world and you know again because of social media you can connect with them every day you know over Skype and you have 24 seven support and it's you know an amazing feeling to have that many people by your side and then you're learning and gaining new information all day every day to put into your education and into your life to move forward I want to go back to something that Alex said though earlier is that is this really is this really a dichotomy between between structured and and unstructured is that really the the problem here because I I hear what you're saying that it's that if you if you know what you want then then the web is is fabulous because you can just follow your dreams and you can and you can you can get it but if you don't then you need that structure and I hear that from I'm and I don't want to go down the path in this in this conversation to say that it's a it's an either or choice and I don't think that's what we're we're talking about here yes related to that I think there's a question about equality and access a question about equality and access and that's a question I think for the panelists and maybe you know other people in the room is you know what if people don't really have time out of school to explore what they want to do what if they're working 20 plus hours a week or helping their parents or maybe they have a single parent at home what if they don't have the structures to you know even have adult mentors to talk to so how do they get started and how to you know how do they actually have a fair shot at some of these wonderful online resources and mentors says noticing the co-founders of big-picture learning Dennis Licky and Elliot Washer and I've worked with Big Picture there's about a network of 50 schools all around the country and I think to the question of finding mentors it might be a question of reimagining the purpose of school in in big-picture learning schools the job of the school is to help students identify their passions and interests and then connect them to mentors and then I think there is still a strong place for the school because when each of those students are then going out and exploring their interests and passions and then coming back together there's a kind of cross pollination and also a mix of I mean we definitely leverage the resources but certainly by connecting it tightly to local community issues we also develop those tight connections so I'm really intrigued by this conversation but I'm I'm really I'm also thinking about the question of like it's not just outside of school like there's the opportunity to really fundamentally redesign the purpose of school to answer and really I think address a lot of these these issues I think that exactly what you're saying is completely correct I think that one of the first place you really have to start looking for mentors like you're saying is in the schooling environment the first place that you have to be looking for mentors or your teachers I'm really interested in history I'm really interested in doing this I'm really interested in media I want to make a video okay let me go to the guy who does the media in my school let me talk to him and just like you're saying okay I need guidance to do my passion what am I passionate about I have no idea so it's about how can the school environment really funnel you into a position where you can get exposed to everything where you can be working with every single teacher closely and you can be saying okay what am I really interested in and then you can be going to that teacher and that's how you can really explore your passion and you can be making videos you can be doing music videos and you can be doing things like that but you can actually be able to do it in school and then you know like was mentioned over here my girlfriend works 40 hours a week and she's in high school she doesn't have time to do anything out of school but it's about how can she actually be in school really connect with her teachers have those online resources in school and exactly how can she redefine the purpose of school and by the time she goes to college she says okay I know this is exactly what I want to do because high school prepared me for life and high school prepared me to really find out you know what I want to be and what I want to do and I just want to address the question about mentors I'm a recent high school graduate and about two years ago I started working on a book on education and I was just really passionate about it because I was feeling frustrated in my school setting and I didn't really know where to start I just started researching on the internet looking at archives of basically every major newspaper and then what I realized was that everybody in the world is is connected by each other basically by an email and you can connect with some of the most most prestigious and most famous people in the world if you just know their email address and what I did I just started guessing emails finding emails on faculty web pages and I doubt what it's funny because what would happen is that people would email me back saying how did you find my email it's not public and it would be a pretty awkward conversation but what would happen was that after some time when I was doing my interviews for my book and what I was realizing was that people want in my situation and my young person people really want to talk to young people and they really have a really motivation and is desired to do so and talking with somebody like Secretary Arne Duncan he can't really criticize me publicly because I'm a student it would look pretty bad on his account so I think what's important to look at is finding mentors it's it's about building that relationship on Twitter I've made so many different friends basically by participating in weekly Twitter chats so in education specifically there's a chat every night maybe it's on social studies or in history or in reimagining school there are all these different communities that you could be a part of and I think Twitter is probably one of the best communities to look to because it's not like Facebook where you have to have access where you have to friend request somebody Twitter it's open on the web and addressing the point about reimagining school I think we have to realize that we have to think about reinventing school from scratch I mean there's some really amazing schools around the country big picture there's a school called the Breitwork school by David Tully in San Francisco and I think what these schools all have in common is that first the curriculum is based on something called the city's a school model where they're using the resources in the community in the city and they're kind of bring bring you back to the actual classroom and I think we have to realize the classroom isn't that Cinderblock Destin Rose chalkboard or blackboard it's it's really the world and once we start reimagining that and thinking about classroom as your the real world in your cities and communities that's when we really make the difference in education what's your book called one size does not fit all a student's assessment of school I'd like to go back to to your comment about the the resources in school and for and or people that don't have enough resources and I think that that's one of my major concerns when I talk about the 68% right I I really am concerned about those not 68 you know that line but lower than that and I'm I think that we're in an unfortunate situation where kids who don't have the resources to engage in these kinds of things on their own are also and and when I talk about resources I don't just mean money I mean psychological resources emotional resources support pure pure support but also familial support districts or systems or schools that don't have enough resources to support them so right we're talking about these great programs but they're really not generally getting to the students that need them most so one of the things I mean you know this is I guess my wonky research side is that I would like to see is as we're we're we're we're implementing these interventions that we're also measuring how effective they are for all students students and and you know maybe even not your most your least motivated students but for everybody and to say to be able to come up with some ideas about like okay this kind of intervention is going to work well most generally here but then how do we individualize that to the students who might need you know a little more because of these lack of resources and I think that's that's one of the key problems that we're we're focusing so much on what the kind of baseline is failing schools and about testing and we're not really asking about how we're failing the youth and so one question also related to mentors I feel like we're talking here about mentors as being some kind of superstar and adult so also to put it out on the table know what's the first place I would actually go and start for within the school is my peers know the student that is one class exactly as good as a mentor as your teacher depending on what you would like to learn and some for example one thing that we do at the youth and media lab is work with students over a period of time and then they go out and they serve as mentors so not to put Gabby here on that bad spot but it's exactly students like her and the friend she came with that I think play a big role in how you can be a mentor and so hi I'm Gabby these are my friends were from a high school in northern Massachusetts and one thing I did learn working with the youth and media lab is that peer to peer mentorships are so critical because they spread mentorships among a much wider range of students no longer do you have to be with an adult to necessarily receive advice you can receive it from a trained peer who can train you to also reach out to just ease that wouldn't be accessible before you know reinforce 20% of students time letting them find if they're interests perhaps are the internet and letting them bring their interests to their school community and bring people in to share their interests with a more accepting group of not only peers adults something that sort of add to that you know that 20% rule and finding a passions um I would think that would make school even more of you know a tool for youth as if we would be able to have the time to sort of you know do what I'm doing all day um in that short amount of time so you can go and you can experiment with different things with your friends and figure out what you like and then you know I always find something very interesting is that all these amazing speakers often go to venues where there's not a large community that can go and see them so not everybody can go and see them and if we could bring those people you know to the schools for all the kids to see all the communities to see they would be able to make those connections and you know maybe figure out what they wanted to do while still you know staying in that school environment the 80% of the time if that's what we needed to do is the first step I think that would be really important. In the back um we've listened to these great stories about these great ideas and these great individual cases of change and big new ideas are reinventing the classroom like we said but unfortunately as a teacher we also see every year more and more focus on tighter and tighter standards and wrote test scores and I wonder especially on the research end is there a way that is there a hope that we can communicate these successes to the people that are in charge of you know guiding our departments of education especially a national level because it seems like these people are so removed from these great cases and it's these data of the research that you do how can we make them connect you know you know my my reaction to that is a strong gut reaction is how the hell did we get here great thanks um I just want to respond a little bit haha yeah I'm just going to politely push back on the standard bashing um I'm a principal of an urban charter school and so we're in a really low performing district to level for district of Massachusetts where everyday kids are showing up and they're not learning and so um we need to consider the other perspective which is that not all kids are empowered by their families by their communities by their schools um to be able to learn even the most basic skills as Orr said earlier reading and writing that are fundamental to practicing some of these other um higher skills uh Alex thank you you also said standards are important um not all students are ready to follow their passions not all students know what they are um so we're again an urban charter school our students are doing really well um tremendously outperforming the district and we do believe that it's very important that our kids learn standards the new standards the common core standards actually are really pretty high order thinking skills the math has a lot of modeling a lot of application the reading and writing as high level so just uh defensive standards but also we have a program where we've really structured over grades 6 to 12 our kids um learning how to identify issues in the community that they care about and then act on them and we have our 12th graders then are doing uh acting on research papers they've written an 11th grade and they can choose their project and go out and what do they want to do in the world and many of them are still uh have a real hard time with that and they don't know well there are so many things out in the world what would I want to pursue um so I don't think schools are enough we couldn't ever possibly be enough for everyone but um but it's just a matter of tinkering towards that and continuing to use the great stories and models that we have right now we're engaging in Eric's game most of our students um in Salem trying to help improve our community through community planet um but you know you you get each kid with something different um but teach them how to read write think and do basic calculations and they have a better shot at pursuing their dreams as well thank you first just to your question thanks Rachel I think that puts things very much into perspective um back to your question though how how do researchers communicate about these findings or anecdotal evidence or increasingly also you know quantitative studies I think on the one hand side we definitely see a shift on the research side that we are more networked as well the research is our more networked we're you know using the same tools of course to to share knowledge and to collect the stories and to tell each other kind of the stories and learnings from our work and meet the conferences but but there is the other thing and I know there are number of people from the ed school in the room that I would like to hear from from whoever you are and wherever you see it what's happening on the education side at the at the schools of education what's happening there in terms of you know balancing and mitigating these tensions between well it's more standardized on the one hand side but then you know we agree on the potential of informal learning at more experimental approaches and the like how do you teach that to your students the future teachers who's here from the ed school who's a structure at the ed school yes we're welcome on it but I but I I wanted to particularly say and response to your question that and I was like it's it's nickel is that right yeah so I have an email I've worked for someone called the innovation unit as well as being at the ed school and we work with a couple of US states with system leaders of the state and I was CC'd into an email of a bunch of them sharing your book with each other so they are listening and they're very conscious of the way that the kind of ecosystem of education is changing and they're all very worried about you know where their systems fit into all of that and and how schools need to change to kind of adapt to this to this new environment but I think you know that there is always the question of kind of how do you ensure equity and there's a there's a big problem about how you kind of create the freedom that can allow students to follow passions and take advantage of the great things that are out there while making sure that you're still you know getting everybody to the point where they have the foundational skills to engage in that so I think the idea of like the 20% kind of thing is fantastic because that's a really practical kind of thing that can ensure it's you know one way of getting balance but I wonder if if any of you had other kind of thoughts or ideas about sort of ways to to change accountability so that you're kind of striking striking maybe a different kind of balance than the one we have now and I actually wanted to qualify you mentioned about the standards bashing I want to qualify my own standards bashing that it's it's not a bashing of the standards themselves but it's a bashing of how we have chosen as a society to evaluate those standards so the standardization of evaluation and then and then needing to kind of meet those you know those goals to get somewhere right I was I'd spoken to to some on the panel about this in our school district they have something called enrichment time which is there 20% and my friends were talking about enrichment time and enrichment time and I said what is it what is enrichment time what does that mean and they said well that's the time when the teachers aren't teaching to the test I thought wow so I I think that's where where my I guess rub is with the standards that we've gotten to a place of course I think that critical thinking skills are important and reading and writing and math and higher order kinds of skills are important I also think there are others that are very important that we're not focusing on either like interpersonal skills and collaboration and and social learning and those kinds of things so can I just bounce it over to Xavier or oh sorry Alex I want to hear from you too we only have a few minutes left and I thought I'd bring you in as another teacher voice and go ahead out uh what I was going to say was um I understand like the whole standard thing but I feel like if you're going to give students like me a standard please make it like not perfect as best as you can because I'm in an AP class and we don't have enough books so you're giving us a standard but it's hard to follow because of the fact that okay now I might just to go print out pieces of paper that after and I'll take home and bring back and so I I believe that feeling give give the you know the public students a standard please uh and like give it give it tough qualities you know as best as we can and also about like the kids doing freedom like trying to the own thing I believe that uh opportunities are always there because I mean I've debate for two years and that's at the school and that's my own time and but that's something that I really enjoy and I I take an urban improv class which is like something that I really enjoy in there I really enjoy it and I do it after school and a lot of kids are really against that because that's their own time whether or not means you're not really interested in that subject because if you're really interested in that subject you would take any opportunity that the school gives you so I feel like a lot of times the school does give you the opportunity the kids are nervous or scared or like I feel like new environment brings out the freedom a lot of kids and then they want to shelter up and not be themselves excuse me there's I'm at the English High School a lot of eyes are on us there is no way I would have been able to do what we did with Community Planet today there's no way it would they literally would have been timed agendas I have a five minute do now move on mini lecture move on demo move on independent work time and then you get a a write-up that says your transition from your mini lecture into reflection took three minutes too long are you kidding me you know and we're talking about diversification and we need to teach all the students but yet if something takes too long or if something wasn't you know you know as a teacher when you're looking at a child's face you there's frustration anger boredom or I'm digging this you have to be ready to go on the fly and figure out you know I'm going to work that I'm going to work that into the next thing and the young I'm one of eleven teachers that are tenured the rest are all provisional at our school because most people either were fired or or jump ship they are they're doing what they're told and they're not there is the craft the magic the pain that you know that I went through the for the first few years they're not they don't they're not getting that experience and and that's unfortunate because I think you know now in my tenth year I'm I'm hitting my stride I'm starting to I feel like I am an educator now you know before I was kind of I'm working this thing the best I can and I'm not winning but I'm I'm trying hard you know now I can go to bed and I know in that yeah and one last note on the on the mentor piece Kevin there Kevin was a mentor for Xavier and I think you're what like two years different in age 19 and 21 19 and 21 and I think you know that that was a success story wasn't it for you X and I think that's what happens a lot you know when we asked is school enough I think I went to some of the best schools that money can buy and I hated them I hated school it was one of those things like the bus would be pulling up I got to I got to go back home I got to go to the bathroom you know like anything I could do to miss the bus would be fantastic but I look at art you know at English high school where we're a tough school we don't have all you know all our ducks in a row but for a lot of our kids this is the one place that they can go where there is it's safe you know they have a computer there isn't you know we don't have in these communities we're one of the only you know segments that you didn't go into the kids' houses and and walk their streets so is school enough for learning no but is it is it a for you guys is it a good place it is loaded question but I mean I look at these guys in particular they're they're always hanging around and they're always with their friends like and I know in the back of their mind as they're watching all this they're like wow do these people have friends like why are they on the internet stuff you know they really are their their peers are their support group and then occasionally you get somebody like Alan Michael myself that takes an interest and says there's something else here man you know let's let's milk this and and they respond but it's it's ultimately about choice and and heart thank you we are it's eight o'clock and I and I want to just we're going to have to wrap up and hopefully there there can be conversation afterwards but I want to give our panel just just the last word here if if if you have something to say you want if kind of jump in go ahead see yeah um maybe I I mean this may may seem ironic that I would take a position on standards the one I'm about to take I think that the case to make to be made is that I mean we were kind of careful not to be to to critical of schools per se I mean we were kind of critical of what was included in in educational discourse but we but we weren't really critical of schools per se because we realize that there are lots of issues that are hugely complex that are very difficult to to fix easily but one of the things that I think is an entry point for um for being more inclusive of what kids are interested in is to sort of take the standards and then think about what the ecosystem is around those standards as maybe the case in the charter school in Salem for example or you were to take Project NOAA which was an elephant story or you're to take Harry Potter Alliance for example and turn that into an educational curriculum and tie it to the standards specifically you'd go a little ways in trying to reach kids in a way that they understood you know whether it was because it was a game or because it was you know getting an elephant to come to your town or or it was that it was that it was based on The Hunger Games or another popular form of young person's fiction so I think that thinking about this that way I think would be productive and would also keep the conversation you know open about the standards which we realized need to exist but also broaden the conversation so that it was broadened in the direction of kids and the things that they're interested in and I think if you were to do that you'd get it you'd have it both ways in some ways and that's the way that's that's what I would like to see actually is to think about that ecosystem becoming part of the standards itself again sort of adding on to what Steve said about the standards I know I think that kids reach standards in different ways and for us to set up a system or set up that space for those kids to reach those standards in the way that works best for them would be you know the best use of everybody's time and it would be more beneficial to the students to the teachers and to the world if those kids were allowed to you know prove themselves and reach those standards by doing something that really meant something to them and then they would be more motivated to reach those standards if that's you know one of their goals and aspirations and sort of a thought provoking question that I'd like to think of is you know what would happen if we gave kids the space to experiment with different things and find their passion and then once they did that allowing them the space to find mentors whether it's in their with their peers whether it's online whether it's you know riding your bike to the dentist's office and meeting with the dentist because you want to be a dentist and then allowing them to experiment with that just in time learning like what would happen with those kids how would education change and how would the world change well I think the changes we've seen today in the documentary in the the fundamental transformations in the learning ecosystem and teaching ecosystem they are happening and that's not the question that's you know it's work in progress and and I think that the bigger question is is how smart are we about opportunity that that we've seen today that we have discussed today but also how do we address some of the challenges where we didn't find good answers regarding the question you know participation gaps or less privileged community members and at the like these are certainly two things we need to work on both bottom up by experimentation I'm very much in favor of that but some of the comments have suggested perhaps increasingly also top down really having policy conversations around these topics and I'm encouraged by the event today but also by much of of the work that we've seen over the past few years in ICT and with education particular that that we will make progress it's a it's an evolutionary process it will take more work and more resources but I'm I'm an optimist and I think will improve our learning ecosystem both as far as educational institutions are concerned but also opportunities for information and informal learning and I guess it comes as a surprise to me that I'm an optimist as well I'm not surprised you're not knowing that's good that's nice because sometimes I think I'm a realist and everybody calls a realist a pessimist so I I think I am an optimist and I agree that that I think I think there there have to be some positive changes coming and that there there's so many movements about that that are focusing on changing schools and on new ways and new ideas for standards new ways of teaching and new ideas for standards and I think that that's one of the conversations that I hope that we'll have as a society soon about what else are we wanting our kids to take away from school we we think about like individual kinds of social problems as being caused by by one variable and I I don't think that way I think that they're that you know social variables and complex interactions between variables and there there's really only one way to kind of deal with that and that's through education and I believe our educational system can and will get us there I think at least for me personally I will continue to really work hard on thinking about ways how to include technology in the classroom and how to help this shift into a positive direction for the students especially and I wanted to thank especially the students that came out here today it's those events and your comments where I learn and where I grow and so thank you for coming up and and I just want to thank you for coming out it's been a great conversation and maybe a round of applause for both our panel and yourself