Hello fellow educators welcome to podcast number 155. I want to take up the wonderful and, almost ethereal theme from last week about Spaces for Education. As most of you know this was one of the very interesting ideas permeating the Vancouver Symposium on Christian Education in the 21st Century. This event was the first of three to be scheduled, bringing Christian Educational leaders together from around the globe to dialogue and envision the changes, the challenges and the opportunities, in the next 15 years, for the Christian School movement. It makes sense that we spoke a lot about technology. The symposium gave the opportunity to showcase a number of technologies. Our own HCOS Online Curriculum Development team were able to talk about our methods of development and give solid examples of how we build our online school courses, or should I say, our curriculum spaces for learning. More on that throughout this podcast. I want to thank one of our frequent commenters, good friend and great HCOS teacher, Bruce Hildebrandt for commenting on last week’s podcast. Here was Bruce’s comment:

HI Greg,

I loved what you had to say about the critical need for parents and teachers to be IN the technologies and spaces that children are using. Technology is here to stay and it will only become increasingly more pervasive in our lives. Protecting our children does not happen by our withdrawing from the spaces that our children occupy; but rather, by our being involved in those same spaces. We need to be familiar with what our children are encountering, and regularly speak into those situations. That is the best way to train, equip, and protect our children. Many of our children and students are FAR beyond us in their use of technology. We need to be looking at ways to enable ourselves as parents and educators to move back into leadership roles in the ways that technology is used and interacted with.

Thanks for the thought-provoking podcast, Bruce.

Thanks Bruce. He latched on to the importance of being “IN the technologies and spaces that are children are using...” continuing on the idea that we need to be there to protect our children. I completely agree with Bruce here. Imagine living in the Wild, Wild West or at least our present day depiction of this era and places. Because it was, by-in-large, anarchistic it presented dangers that normal, more civilized environments didn’t have to deal with. This anarchistic spirit of the west, in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s attracted very specific types of people who came there to take advantage of the “lawlessness” or perhaps, the opportunities that little or no regulations made possible. This environment was a very exciting place for the entrepreneur and those who were somewhat on the outside of the “civil” and refined societies of the east. The multiple gold rushes and vast resources beaconed men and women who sought a new opportunity, seemingly without limits. But this was a dangerous environment and full of the “sins” of the flesh. Yes, the entrepreneur and the free spirit explores had great opportunity, but so also did the villains of the Wild, Wild West. It was full of outlaws who took advantage of the wide open, unexplored territories. In the important commercial centers, prostitution, gambling, alcohol and drug abuse were rampant. Kidnappers, pedophiles, extreme racists and all manner of social deviants were free to live and practice their evils with impunity. The west would have been lost had it not been for the civility that most people brought with them from the east. And the civility came, primarily, through the many, many Christian missionaries, preachers and pastors that also saw opportunity in the West. It was a place where they could plant churches, build schools, effect culture, find converts and build the true kingdom, the Kingdom of God.

Now, doesn’t this sound like the great new frontier and land of opportunity that has been discovered these last 15 years. Just imagine with me, Marco Polo had the vast orient, Columbus opened the great adventure to the New World, Magellan had the oceans, Lewis and Clark explored the vast western passage, Stanley Livingstone traveled the enormous African interior, Armstrong stepped on the moon, but our kids, they have the greatest adventure of them all, the Digital World, or as it is called Cyberspace. Yes the world is dangerous but, unlike the west where we had to choose to go, the internet has come to us and our children almost without choice and almost without restraint. There are places in the world where some restraints are being erected but even these are proving unsuccessful. As our friend Steve Collis said in last week’s podcast, “it’s the wild west out there.” So, like Bruce Hildebrandt’s comment, I propose the same advice given sometime around 1869, by the New York Times columnist, Horace Greenly, “Go west young man.” I propose that we all “go west” or rather into cyberspace and explore the potential that this world will give to our children. We must go with them, to keep them safe and to keep them civil. Like the Methodist missionaries who flooded the Wild West, we must create the civility that can only come from a life that follows after Christ. So thank you Bruce for this grave but important reminder.

As I podcasted last week, I was taken up with the idea that Stephen Collis presented. Obviously it is metaphoric but only barely. “Technology is Space” is almost completely true regarding the internet if it wasn’t “virtual space.” I’ll say more about this in a minute. What technology really does though is it extends ourselves into larger spaces much more efficiently and quickly. Consider the impact that the railroad had upon the space we call Canada. It transformed our nation by dramatically shortening the time it took to travel from Montreal to Toronto, then Winnipeg to Regina. The greatest achievement was Calgary to Vancouver. The technology of the railroad open the vast resources and opportunities of the Pacific Northwest and kept Canada as the true and rightful sovereign in our own part of the world here in BC. Of course, the shrinking effect that air travel has upon our world is pervasive. As I write this 21 of our campus school and 5 of our online school students are preparing to safely fly over the vast spaces of the same Wild West in mere hours’ time that took explorers months and months to accomplish at great peril. The technology of and marvellously engineered roads and the chariot extended Rome’s space, the technology of the “codex” (the first truly transportable books) extended intellectual space of the first century and aided in the distribution of the Gospel, the technology of the seagoing vessel extended Europe’s space into the new world, the technology of the internal combustion engine extended everyone who had a car’s space, the technology of the high-rise has now extended the space over and over again in the cities of our modern world. We can go on and on, the train, the bus, the bicycle, the phone, the TV, the radio are extensions of space. They extend our influence, experiences and ultimately our relationships.

Here again is Stephen Collis from the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning who was a presenter at the Vancouver Symposium:

“I repeat this like an automaton now. I think these words are original, so yes you can quote me:

 Technology mediates relationships. Space mediates relationships. Technology is space.

 Get-it? Two people in a meadow. Their proximity allows them to hear each other and have a conversation. The space mediates the relationship. If they stand further away they can't hear each other, so no conversation, so no relationship.

 Ah, but if they use technology... such as smoke signals, or a telephone, then although they are not in the same physical space they are in the same virtual space. Technology is space. Technology creates space.

 Furniture is technology and is also therefore space.

 How does your classroom mediate relationships? The shape of your room is technology. The furniture is technology. The layout, centres of gravity, signs and decorations, doors and windows, are technology.

 And yes of course the computers and internet are also technology, and are also therefore space. Does your class move through virtual space as well as physical? Do you help your students nurture a virtual persona? Do they publish online? Do they tweet? Do they Skype? Does each have a profile page representing their current learning? Do they answer questions from other students in other schools, and ask their own questions in turn?

 Very tricky one, space. Whatever we do we mustn't take it at face value, or ignore it. Every decision about the physical space of the learning environment, from chairs to the internet, is laden with meaning and implications.”

This metaphor of space and technology is so simple and yet so profound in understanding our world today. By the way this can found about the 5^th link down on the Google search, “technology is space” which connects you to his blog know throughout all of Cyberspace as www.HappySteve.com.

What is most powerful here is Steve’s connections between space, technology and relationships. Let’s forever cast away the idea that technology hinders or prevents “real” relationships. It is no more responsible for altering a relationship than two people who walk towards each other through a meadow so that they can have a romantic embrace. Did the meadow cause that idyllic picture. Of course not it was the embrace and the romantic associations. The meadow did provide the environment for the two coming together. This is what the internet has done with us and everyone else around the world. It has created space for relationships, good and bad, to come together.

I love how Steve related the concept to our educational spaces. I am always excited when a new teacher comes into our campus school and gets their classroom ready. By the way the modern classroom is a technology. We employ numerous technologies to make it comfortable, ie. the heater or air conditioner. We employ the technology of furniture to fashion the space around the types of relationships we want with our children. This is using the technology of the last 100 years to create the 20^th Century classroom phenomenon which, undoubtedly most of our educational institutions are still using today. It is a technology developed to create a public education system that would give opportunities to the masses. It has been amazing and prolific in its effect upon the world. The question that educators everywhere must begin asking is, does this technology of the 20^th Century applicable to the 21^st Century. What do we need to change in the various classroom technologies, by this I mean the tables and chairs, the shape, the color, the windows, the very spaces themselves as well as the teacher tools, which we almost always, mistakenly, think of as the only technologies in the classroom? Do we need to find and pioneer new approaches for our classrooms if we can even think of them as “rooms” any more. I always appreciated my colleague, Steve Smith, who was Principal at Heritage for several years, and his desire to liberate his students from these spaces. In fact, he figured out a way to liberate them even from Canada through the Global Citizenship program which are the kids I just mentioned on their way from Mexico.

So back to those new teachers: I usually sneak into their classrooms in the first week and spy on how they have arranged their classrooms. This tells me a great deal about how they view the relationship they have between them and their students. Much of our pedagogy is determined by our spaces or perhaps I have that backwards, perhaps our pedagogy is what is determining our spaces. Actually I think it is both.

Parents and families are discovering the vast new educational spaces that are now available online where they don’t need to send their kids to the traditional spaces of our campus school programs. Think of Heritage Christian Online and BC Online and the International Christian Online Schools as spaces where kids can come to school or better yet can come to learn from any other space in the world. We now have orphans from Sierra Leone who are sharing space with Christian school children in Nanaimo British Columbia. In cyberspace your physical location really doesn’t matter that much anymore. What an amazing equalizer. This was the goal of the 19^th and 20^th Century architects of education when they created the technology of the modern classroom. They wanted to equalize educational opportunities for the masses. Unfortunately these technologies don’t come without a cost. This approach created a one-size fits all model of education that we are beginning to realize won’t fit well in the 21^st Century. Awe here is another point, no technology comes without a cost and we must count the cost of the new technologies we are employing to change our relationships, schools and ultimately education. Will the technologies we employ change the classroom? Most certainly, they already are cracking the foundations of the traditional methods. In BC we are seeing more and more disruption coming as result of the new digital spaces which give students new places to learn and go to school. These are not completely refined yet, they have limitations and are often modeled after, or are trying to reproduce a 20th Century result. Nevertheless the “Tipping Point” has come and we are on the way towards a whole new way of learning in entirely different spaces altogether.

What a day we live in. It is a time of unprecedented opportunity to move into places and spaces that were never available as educators and learners in the past. We can learn and teach from our homes. We can recreate our schools to be spaces that intersect the outside worlds to the cyber worlds. We can be the Methodist preachers and families that help in taming the Wild, Wild West.

Ok – be thankful I am not begging for money like some lonely radio evangelist. All I ask for is your participation. So stop what you are doing right now. Pull over to the side of the road or get of your exercise machine or simply reach over to your night stand and take two minutes to write me an email about what you thought about these way out ideas that fill my head constantly. Email at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it podcast and let me know if I can include your comments in a future podcast. If not fine, just humour me and tell me what you think. Oh and thank you for listening and thank you for your commitment to Discipleship-based Christian Education.