brilliant. a distinction i had never thought of before... but had subconsciously been wrestling with. working in ed.. i always thought flow was the answer... but upon recent research - i have started having this nagging feeling that it was a super way to cope. upon reading Godin's Linchpin and Robinson's The Element... i felt flow being less of a true element. wow.. what a find. thank you for sharing.

Thank you Jason. Very exciting for sure. I was just telling a friend.... the kids and i have talked about this a lot. a year ago - we would have been content to doing our own little thing in our own little district. it's not that we want to flaunt anything. in fact - we are craving critique. we want exposure in order to improve...the more eyes on it sort of thing - you know... but even more than that.. the more we keep learning... we feel a gut level responsibility to share. we know people are seeking a better way. One of the things the kids have voiced that they want to do most and in the beginning is to immerse themselves in conversation and culture with authentic speakers. They have already located several in town (except the Hebrew)... but would also like to have several virtual contacts.. adults and students. Would love any help you could give us with some of those connections. We will most certainly be logging - mostly video logging (we're thinking that is a great means for pre-teacher training and prof development as well.) If you have any logging suggestions.. please offer those as well.

We just got permission to launch a district wide Innovation Lab fall 2010, where kids create their own courses per passion via personal learning networks. Currently about 50 are signed up, about 20 of those for foreign languages. About 12 for Spanish (levels 2-5), 4 Hebrew (level 1), and 5 German (level 3). The conversations have already been quite invigorating. The students are taking complete ownership in planning out how and what they want to learn. Would love to share the year with you, us gaining your insight, and you gaining what the kids do with this. We had our first meeting last week for students and parents.. I showed them Sir Ken's talk. more info on what we're doing if you're so inclined: http://voicethread.com/share/988528/