My most recent post, “I’m a mop not a sponge” , highlighted a metaphorical epiphany that one of my students had about his learning style. This post will look at metaphors I have found on my journeys through the blogosphere since then.

I’ll start with Lynn losing her glasses. Her Optical Powercut gave her a new perspective on things:

So, what have I learnt? That it’s good to look at things differently sometimes and everyone is much thinner than I thought!!

I think sometimes even ‘rose coloured glasses’ can impair our view of contrasting colours… and ideas!

Moving outward from personal ‘insight’, Carolyn examines classrooms with glass walls , she wonders about the safety of ‘open’ classrooms, but candidly admits,

One of the debates I’ve been having recently has to do with the publicness of learning through 2.0 tools like blogs. Don’t get me wrong. As someone who’s been blogging for almost nine years, and has a dozen different status messages broadcasting my moods & motions 24/7, I’ve set the bar low when it comes to my own privacy.

So we make ourselves ‘open books’ but justifiably worry about how ‘open’ our classrooms have become.

From our classrooms, Pete tells us about our children, The Wolves of Learning,

Our natural curiosity is like a wild animal; it hunts where it needs to in order to satisfy its deep hunger. As children, we awaken each day with an insatiable appetite to learn. It is in our early years that we are “wolves of learning”. There is a deep, DNA-based, natural connection between learning and survival; call it the burning relevance of the empty stomach.

Pete states that institutionalized learning has tamed, “The wildness of our natural curiosity…” and concludes very powerfully,

Let us find ways to give our children back their birthright, their natural curiosity and facility to learn. There have to be ways that we can organize our learning institutions to accommodate individual curiosity and the standardized curriculum. I believe that thoughtful educators can create environments that are less restrictive and provide much more natural habitat for learning. Let us find ways to foster the wildness and thrill of learning again. Let us answer the “Call of the Wild”.

This reminds me so much of the many links I provide in my metaphorically titled Square Peg, Round Hole post, which -each in their own way- comment rather eloquently on the misgivings of our schools… (Note Warlick’s Alien World and the very appropriate Animal School for other meaningful metaphors on this topic.)

And finally on a larger scale Miss Profe notes, in What Really Makes the World Flat, where the most meaningful ‘bridges’ can be made,

Global bridges are important and necessary. But, what about the bridges that can be built between, say, a suburban school and an urban school within the same community? What about making connections between people who can have a real impact on each other and who may be dealing with similar issues? We can visit and meet face-to-face, and see how mutual suggestions are benefiting each other. One does not need a blog or a wiki to do that.

This reminds me of one of my favorite metaphors I use with students, John Heider’s interpretation of Lao Tzu’s Ripple Effect found in The Tao of Leadership. Our ripples of influence may be far-reaching, but often our greatest influence can be closest to us, where our ripple can be felt most. Miss Profe concludes,

Developing a deeper understanding of one’s community and the people who live there can provide a transformative learning opportunity for students, and in the process, lead to a flatter world in the most profound sense. As we like to say, learning is messy, and there is nothing messier than connecting with The Other within one’s own backyard.

Although I agree with Miss Profe, and value her focus on impacting our own personal communities, I also think that our digital world has made it much easier to have an incredible impact on a global scale.

The world isn’t so much ‘flat’ as it is woven.

…and as I have said before, metaphors teach.

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Images: Glow by Steve Crane, bifocal by miss oddgers (Karen Rodgers), Celstial Artillery by jpstanley (Jeremy Stanley), Thanks All, you are my favorites by f2g2 (Florian), Divided we fall by mafleen (Kate Robison), Creative Commons by ocean.flynn (maureen Flynn-Burhoe), and CBC ‘Spring Carnival’ detail by Velma’s World (Velma Belchik).