What constitutes a classroom?

I’ve been wondering this a lot lately, and it’s a question driving my brainstorming efforts for my teacher research project in my Investigating Classroom Literacies grad course. I’ve found that I conceptualize a classroom much differently than a traditional brick-and-mortar space. I’ve actually coined a new moniker for it: learning locale.

The OED defines locale as “A place or locality; esp. a place considered with reference to some particular event or circumstances connected with it.” So, a learning locale is any place where learning (the event) occurs—learning being the development or application of useful knowledge. It can be a physical place, an online place, or a mental place (i.e., reflection or critical thinking). It can occur socially among people or individually. It’s no longer confined by traditional boundaries. Because of Web2.0 technologies, we can learn with and from people all over the world, at any time of day, on any day. And, in more ways than we can imagine, we can easily share what we learn, in turn helping to facilitate more learning locales. Regarding material, I believe all the world is a text. By this I mean learning can be facilitated by actively making sense of the countless texts we consume in the world: situations, events, experiences, conversations, multimodal texts, audio-visual texts, written texts, spoken texts, and just about anything else that we can “read,” gain meaning from, and therefore learn from.

In today’s world, opportunities to consume, create, connect, and collaborate are endless. This proves that learning locales can be anywhere; they’re no longer confined to the four walls that we’ve traditionally conceptualized as a classroom.

Reading more than just words

I enjoy writing six-word memoirs and mantras.  One that I've written recently is a reminder of the importance of reading in our lives:

"All the world is a text."

Reading doesn't just have to be limited to words--in a book or magazine or on a website or email or billboard.  Reading is actually something we can do on a larger scale.  And we can do it often and regularly.  We can read the world around us--situations or events that unfold in our lives, our circumstances, our choices, our experiences, our successes, our failures, our learnings, and our relationships.  What's more, we can read these things in other people's lives, too.

Reading is something we do actively.  Reading is perceiving.  Reading is learning.  Reading is growing.  And perhaps most important of all: reading generates awareness.  It's about more than just words.  The whole world is a text waiting to be read, analyzed, critiqued, learned from, emulated, not emulated, enhanced, or changed.  

So, when you get up tomorrow (and everyday thereafter), remember all the world is a text.  Go out and read it.