Come Together

by Shelly Blake-Plock

Wine AND Cheese. Laurel AND Hardy. Mick AND Keef. Lennon AND McCartney.

The best things in life compliment one another.

And so it should be with Analog AND Digital.

The new paradigm shouldn't be about exclusion. It should be about dynamics. We don't exclude Paper because we include Digital. Rather, we strive to exclude the static modes of thinking often represented by paper -- but also easily represented by poorly-used digital.

The new paradigm shouldn't be about closing down schools and taking learning exclusively online. A computer screen will never replace a football field. A smartphone will never replace a theater. A Skype chat will never replace a high-five.

But neither will arguments berating tech alter the fact that digital tech is the context of the present and that we owe it to our kids to educate them in the world in which they find themselves living and not in the world some of us may wish still existed.

And so we look to augment one with the other to the exclusion of neither. We seek to bring the speed and democratizing openness of the digital to the solidity of the analog and bring the warmth and experience of the analog to the cool intelligence of the digital.

Schools themselves are changing and they will continue to change. So let's use what we've got -- both analog and digital -- to the full benefit they both offer. We don't need a classroom in which to learn poetry. A tree and some shade will do. In winter, we can take inspiration from the museum school model and take the kids directly into the experience. In the meantime, use all that space in the old classrooms to do what those types of building do well: let them be labs, let them be community spaces. Turn your rooms into STEM innovation centers. Let the science loose. Let the math live and let it get messy. Use your on-site tech and know-how to train, empower, and embolden the children AND adults in your community.

While we're at it, create those partnerships with museums, historical societies, libraries, state parks, local farms, and public institutions. Spend Mon, Wed, Fri in the lab and Tues and Thurs taking in Van Goghs, or farm animals, or new friendships and alliances through community outreach.

Teach English by reading about whatever it is that you are doing. Make art on the move and in the field. Learn history by learning how to talk to strangers; make new friends who are not like you, and listen to perspectives different than your own.

Keep those smartphones handy all the while.

Turn lab time into bring-a-scientist-to-school time. Turn math into a worldwide problem solving mission. Pull out that smartphone and turn a stroll through the art gallery into an augmented trip through history.

Try things out. See what happens.

Bring the Analog and the Digital together. The life of the heart and the life of the mind. The mathematician and the poet.

Enough with the idea that one thing excludes another. The only thing worth excluding is fear. Fear, ignorance, and banality.

Write that out on a Post-It and stick it to your monitor.