Spell with flickr: Free?

After reading Pam Moran (@pammoran) and Chad Ratliff’s (@chadratliff’s) coauthored posts about this year’s budget cycle, I’m asking myself, What’s my part? How do I shelter my vision of teaching and learning in the classroom?

First, let me say that money isn’t everything; however, it helps distribute the future more evenly. Best practices in teaching and learning carry over between communications tools, and classroom discussion is a very social medium. Issues of instruction and management certainly persist across platforms. Despite obstacles to learning, gifted storytellers and community builders can help any classroom transcend its brick and mortar, pencil and paper boundaries through meaning-making and imagination. When money is lost, learning shouldn’t be.

I know that whatever successes I’ve had in the classroom have been inspired, strengthened, and synthesized by learning from others. Outside experts, colleagues connected by social media, and students publishing work the world over enrich my practice and offer me novel solutions to local dilemmas. While my colleagues and students teach me all the time, we can learn to look at our shared local problems from new perspectives and ask new questions about them by interacting with caring, inquisitive peers in other places and cultures. Partnerships like these also help make real for all learners the lessons in curiosity, community, and empathy we want to draw from class content.

That’s why I want to maintain 1:1 Internet access in my classroom in support of 1:1 learning. I want students to use social networking to find academic identities they won’t risk exploring in class. I want expert audiences to teach us how to learn better and better share our learning. I want my students to see that learning is life-long and universal.  I want my students to show others the same.  I don’t want financial constraints keeping the possibilities of learning with and from others around the world in check.

While it might not be possible for me to engineer a self-sustaining classroom, I’m thinking a lot this week about what I can do  to support my vision of what next year’s classroom should be and how it should engage students and support their learning.

At the extremely convoluted end, I wonder about incorporating as a non-profit for the explicit purpose of furnishing technology for students in my classroom. At a previous school, I served on a PTO board that incorporated as a non-profit in order to make itself more attractive to perspective donors. Would parents and community partners donate money managed for a single classroom to make sure that its learners have 1:1 access to the Internet? Maybe not, but the benefit of finding a dependable patron in this economy could repay the cost of incorporating, especially if a lawyer could be found to prepare the application and by-laws pro-bono. Would it be helpful (or even possible) to have a board offering accountability and regular feedback to me as a teacher? I like to think so. I think any time spent listening to the wants and needs of diverse stake-holders creates opportunities for learning unavailable to the isolated teacher. I’m interested in the potential of this possibility, but I wonder if it’s at all manageable. It might be better to serve on my PTO and encourage it to incorporate and better crowd-source the fund-raising. It might be better to incorporate a coalition of teachers with a shared vision across schools or divisions. There’s further reflection and learning to be done here.

Regardless of my (perhaps non-starter) non-profit status, it’s clearly time to pitch projects on DonorsChoose.org. For my state, donations supporting technology requests (24%) place third after those for classroom supplies (40%) and books (29%). In 2009 DonorsChoose.org raised over $250,000 for school projects here in Virginia. Twenty-four percent of $250,000 is $60,000 dollars. So, for example, with 5% of that pie ($3,000), I could get 15 iPods Touch at $199 a piece, download some apps, and .pdf-up some DIY flexbook goodness.  I might not outfit my entire classroom at once using this approach, but I can see a group of generous patrons helping us build up capacity over time to provide a class of 25 or 30 with 1:1 Net access.

Likewise, it’s time to get better at grant writing and prepare several this summer.

I’m thinking about school-business partnerships, as well. While it’s doubtful that an Apple or a Microsoft would negotiate special pricing or donations with a single classroom teacher, I think local businesses might be willing to pitch in and lend a hand or furnish a device, especially in return for good press from the division’s communications office, or in return for some kind of expo night for company personnel, board members, and local media to demonstrate how local businesses support local children. Maybe a local software developer would build a phone or web app from student design specs and then sell it online, but donate it to our class.

Finally, I’m thinking about monetizing student work, not-for-profit, to support programs that support students’ learning. I imagine an Etsy-esque online school boutique advertising student work and suggesting donations that support students’ schools. This idea seems workable – we have band fundraisers already, right? – and certainly commerce can lend an authenticity to students’ notions of audience and feedback. However, it’s important to strike a balance here between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, between service and consumerism, and between cooperation and competition. I wouldn’t want students rushing learning to create a product. I wouldn’t want students to lose sight of serving their school with their work. I wouldn’t want students to compete with one another over sales. I wouldn’t want to let “work” ever overshadow learning or ever be something a student felt pressured to do. I think all of these concerns can be addressed while building a classroom culture of learning, creativity, entrepreneurship, service, and choice, but it’s incredibly important to mind student and stake-holder notions of how commodifying student work supports learning.

The bottom line is that I want to help the bottom line.  I don’t just want to keep learning moving forward; I want to keep students’ learning moving out into the world.

Any free advice?