All catchphrases tied to movements are limiting. Many people fail to see the scope of what the Civil Rights Movement(s) were/are trying to accomplish. Grunge and punk movement lost their zest when radio and MTV announcers could label them easily.

The pillar behind ‘edupunk’ or any DIY movement must be changing the way students and teachers interact – classrooms should be interactive communities that are driven by the input of students. (http://educatorblog.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/edupunk-is-dead-already/)

I transcribe part of a comment that I raised on Nigel Robertson’s post on the same subject:

It must be my age, or perhaps some other disadvantage, but I can’t help getting a measure of deja vu.

I began my teaching way back in ‘69. They’d just put men on the Moon. Science was abuzz having enjoyed bumper years from the 50’s of BBC TV slots when Raymond Baxter, Carl Sagan, Jacob_Bronowski, Patrick_Moore and other enthusiastic exponents of the ‘modern’ scientific age were given prime time. Books were to be lauded. New books were it.

I’d had an experiential secondary education where my teachers encouraged me and my classmates to pick things to pieces – good old Scottish education but with a ‘modern’ pitch.

We would dismantle television sets and automobile engines, clocks, electric motors, reed organs, anything material that held a mystery. I got my degree from the university of life doing all of that and more.

Those were the days when boys knew the contents of a golf-ball like they did their fingernails, when students were encouraged to aim for the Moon or further. Models were built out of anything we could lay our hands on and used to give insight to what might be, not what’s supposed to be.

I feel at home with edupunk. There’s a grubbiness about it that smacks of the fundamental. Gone are the days of deliberating on the ‘black box’ lesson. Let’s not hang about. Where’s the can opener!

Ka kite
from Middle-earth

Another name we give this is “radical pedagogy.” The first and foremost voice on this is Paolo Freire (my hero). Try and get ahold of this book of his before you leave for holiday. It’s slim. You can likely read it in a day or two. But powerful. It will blow your mind. You will love it.
http://www.amazon.com/Pedagogy-Indignation-Critical-Narrative/dp/1594510512