For the Ripe Environment to exist, we have to have better (and more simple) reasons for doing what we do with technology. So, I was struck with the simplest of all reasons for using blogs in your classroom: It’s the content, stupid. (I believe this is the one and only time that my mind has blatantly stolen from Bill Clinton and his 1992 presidential campaign.)

The following is what I shared with my students after I shared my rather abrasive reasoning for blogging in the classroom.

That is why we use blogs to communicate, not because they are easy, not because they are more collaborative, it is simply because they let the content speak for itself. Without content you are nothing. Without great ideas there is no hope for the future. It is the content that matters, not the format. That is why we do blogs, to pull content up through the rss straw, roll it around in our mouth-like readers, tasting each smooth milkshake post and swallow it down, totally satisfying our desire to fill our bellies with content.

Now, content can be anything from stories to videos to embedded PowerPoint. The only crucial element of content is that you are proud enough of it to consider it yours. That means that content does not exist in an answer that was just done to get it over with. Content does not exist in the unrealized half-wonderings of a before school speed post. Content exists in thought-provoking ideas. It exists in well-worded prose or original poetry. Content is the torrent of inspiration that is created when authenticity is the goal, and you actually have the time to do something.

I actually wrote the preceding piece on my Palm Treo while I was eating cereal. I didn’t start writing it as a way of addressing The Ripe Environment, but this piece really gets at prerequisite number 6: Students and Educators should know that their products and ideas as valuable. If we are concerned with content, students will know that we genuinely care about what they express and teachers will know that their ideas will have some impact. If we focus too much on adding more features or tools to our toolkit, we will never get to the act of content creation. And that would be a very sad thing.

The social network that many of us have come to love, Classroom 2.0, is a space for teachers to come together and share ideas for and stories about teaching in the 21st century. Yet, so far, it has not been an avenue for turning on “would-be advocates” to social media. It has basically been a way of aggregating all of the great minds that are already engaged in the authentic use of technology. Although we may be able to see Classroom 2.0 as a living example of collaboration, most other people won’t. They will see it as a teacher-based myspace, a place where work and play blend into this muddy mixture that can not possibly pay attention to the details of an individual classroom.

So, if Classroom 2.0 isn’t it, then what are the Living Examples of collaboration that The Ripe Environment requires?

Well, I don’t have to look to much further than the hour and half I spent with these eight teachers. In fact, I don’t have to much further than the first few minutes I spent with them. In those beginning moments of our time together, I asked the following question: “How would your writing (and writing instruction) change if the form and content of your writing were separable?” Now, there is nothing very special about this question except in that it demands an answer. Most teachers cannot resist a question about how they will or will not change their teaching in light of a new idea. Better yet, this question does not ask for a generic answer that could have come from anyone, but a real answer that only the individual teacher can provide.

I realized, perhaps too late to make my presentation as good as it could be, that the only thing Living Examples require is action on the part of the newly initiated. If the example of collaboration can go on existing without the new teacher, it isn’t Living in the way that it should. If the type of collaboration is revolutionary but requires no revolutionary step on the part of the person seeing it for the first time, then it is just another piece of noise that can be filtered out.

There are too many collaborations going on in our edublogosphere that require only minimal thought and effort on the part of the observer. Classroom 2.0, for all of its merits, will continue to be an edubloggers’ paradise until new users are made to feel challenged by the very notion of collaboration. Where are the engaging questions that will bring new bloggers into our spaces? Where are the wonderful memes that grab a hold of our attentions? Why aren’t we reaching out with inquiry rather than answers?

We seem to simply accept that everyone should want to use blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks and all of our other wonderful tools, but we really don’t ask other people if they agree. We need to let others poke holes in our logic/pedagogy. We need to ask others to contribute, not just to the periphery of the conversation, but to the hearty core. We need to let them change our spaces, to create the Living Examples for a new group of teachers, teachers that can get along fine without technology in their classrooms (or at least think they can).

So, those are the things I learned today. Throughout my presentation, the most engaging moments were when I was asking my fellow teachers to think about how they saw blogging working in their classrooms or how they envisioned a shift in their instruction.

The Living Examples, therefore, are time sensitive. They only exist for the moments in which a teacher feels challenged enough to act and collaborate with either the challenger or others who feel the same way. If they do not take advantage of the opportunity they have been confronted with, the same question or line of thinking will never engage them in the same way. They will need another Living Example of collaboration in order to get them into the Ripe Environment, and we need to create it for them.

So, I guess my challenge to anyone who reads this is as follows: What are the questions, ideas for inquiry, or memes that will get teachers and students to create Living Examples for one another?

The first of the 10 prerequisites for The Ripe Environment is “Educators and learners must have a genuine need to be heard by others and, in one way or another, receive feedback for contributions.” This need for input and feedback equates to a continual longing for connection. Our ideas must be connected to other’s for them to have value. They must be experienced by someone out there somewhere who is intrigued, disgusted, embarrassed, or in some other way affected.

Connection is different in The Ripe Environment, though. It is no longer sufficient to meet someone and shake his or her hand. This is not a connection; it is merely a coincidence that both of you happen to be in the same room. A connection is something that is felt when ideas/personalities/beliefs meet one another and are challenged, bettered, or assimilated. Two people can be talking about the similar ideas or completely opposite opinions, but until a link is made between the two, neither are aware of the similarities and differences. That means, that there is no value held within either. And truly, connection is all about creating value for the the two people doing the connecting.

The three types of connections that create the most value are as follows:

• The 1:1
  • Definition: Two people with the same aims. A friend. An adversary. A person who encourages you to do your best work.
  • Examples: A twitter friend. Someone you e-mail/IM regularly that asks you exchange questions and answers with. A collaborative document (i.e., Google Docs)

• The autograph (aka 1:many)
  • Definition: A fan or follower of someone else’s ideas. An inspiration. A person that creates (or attempts to create) a movement.
  • Examples: A twitter follower. A blog that you read or write. A podcast. A comment on a blog post.

• The frame (aka many:many)
  • Definition: A builder upon other’s ideas. A new context for established content. A collaborative network.
  • Examples: A tweet. A Meme. A trackback. A Wiki. A webcast. A social network.

All three of these connections are essential for the culture of collaboration to occur. If we stop at merely 1:1 interaction, collective intelligence is wasted. If, on the other hand, if all we are doing is framing other’s ideas out in the open, there is never any time to develop personal relationships with those that can directly benefit from our ideas and help them to grow.

So, we can blend the three types of connections. A link within a blog is both a 1:1 and a 1:many, as is a comment. Blending personal and public connections is a way of introducing our own contacts to our greater network; it is a way of getting rid of the apprehension that people have about putting themselves “out there.”

For example, a colleague of mine writes great e-mails. They are concise and beautifully written. They are based in both theory and practice. They ask amazing questions and beg me to go deeper with everything I am working on. So, I tell him to start blogging the e-mails, and I ask him if I can podcast about them. What I am doing is introducing his ideas to some of the other people I am connecting to. These are the connections that make sense in The Ripe Environment because they don’t allow any good idea to stay archived in an e-mail folder, never to be heard from again.

My hope is that we start honoring these types of connections for the inspiration and passion that give to our daily lives. We cannot settle for an atmosphere of acquaintanceship in our learning communities. We must strive for an culture of connection.

This post is in draft form. My hope is that it will expand to include better definitions of each type of connection as well as examples. Please feel free to comment to that affect, or if you would prefer a more 1:1 connection, please e-mail me at benwilkoff@gmail.com. I would also like to thank those of you who are already interested in expanding upon this idea (Patrick Higgins, Chris Lehmann, Alec Couros, TechKnow, and Christian Long) . Please write as much about as you can. It is the only way that The Ripe Environment will actually occur.

I am tired of talking about the tools. Many of us have been talking about the tools for a long time now. We have said that using technology for technology’s sake is counterproductive. We want to use technology as a tool, right? But the tools for collaborating and creating are the largest sticking points for others. Teachers get caught up on jargon, on the basic skills of one program or process. They are still so focused on “podcasting” or “dreamweaver” that there is no room for creating the environment in which people will actually want to go beyond the tools, into true learning (you know, what we want our kids to be doing). What, then, is beyond the tools? What should we really be reaching for? The Ripe Environment. The simultaneous personal and public experience of using all of the tools at the teacher’s disposal to tear down walls, collaborate with each another, and question the traditional role of technology in the classroom.

So, how do we get to The Ripe Environment? Well, I have started to reflect on how I became a constant-learner and contributor to this thing I am more and more reluctant to call School 2.0. I want to replicate this process for others, and showing people my flickr account, my del.icio.us account, my blog, my podcast, my pedagogy, my wiki projects, and my twitter account just doesn’t seem to work very well. What does actually work is making sure that they have the right environment so that they can explore these resources on their own, through their own creation.

I am now proposing the 10 prerequisites for collaboration as a way of creating The Ripe Environment in the classroom, in a school, and in a district. There will be quite a few follow-up posts about this topic, but I wanted to get some feedback on what I have already written before I go too far off the deep end. Please leave a comment or e-mail me at benwilkoff@gmail.com.

Here they are:

In order for the environment to be ripe for collaboration, educators and learners must:

1. Have a genuine need to be heard by others and, in one way or another, receive feedback for contributions.
2. See living examples of collaboration (not case studies or projects from a few years ago) that they can become a part of.
3. Have the time to connect more than two dots together. (Rather than connecting: “My students need to know this” with “here is the information” they need to have time to connect “My student needs to know this” with “my students need to evaluate this for validity” with “my students need to know how to use this resource to find the information” with “my students need to create new information for others to use.”)
4. See collaboration as an extension of their natural instincts as a teacher (opening possibilities for learning).
5. Find the backchannels relevant to them (these backchannels must be encouraged and honored as vital sources of learning).
6. Know that their products and ideas are valuable.
7. Understand the marks of successful collaboration. (They have to know what it looks like.)
8. Accept that questions are both for interdependent and independent learning. (All questions are serious points of inquiry in The Ripe Environment.)
9. Believe that personal and professional change can never be institutionalized. (Individuals create change, not schools or districts.)
10. Know that meetings, conferences, and workshops are not the places where the most powerful learning and change takes place.

I will be writing more about each one of these 10 prerequisites, but please let me know what you think about them as stand-alone ideas.