Something about being in a different place, or maybe a place so rich with literary history, makes you realize that learning isn’t just something that can go on in school, but all around you.

The Monterey area is like an outdoor learning laboratory–you hear sea lions barking at night or can watch them from the wharf, you can explore tide pools or watch sea otters swimming off shore–or you can look out and see farms much like John Steinbeck must have seen 75 years ago.

Being away from familiar sites makes me realize how much the world around our students wherever we live is a learning laboratory.   There is much potential for us  to expand our thinking about what school “looks like.”

On the plane, I watched Brian Crosby’s K12 Online presentation video on “obstacles to opportunities” which was awe-inspiring.  I think what I found so moving about it was the way he has expanded the world for his students and what opportunities they will now believe are open to them as a result of his teaching.

I’ll be sharing ideas from the Internet Librarian conference this week that we can use to open up our schools and libraries so that they can become  global laboratories for our students.   (Edublogs is having some difficulties by the way, so if my blog becomes unavailable during the conference for any length of time, you can follow me on technolibrary.tumblr.com, which is a scrapbooking site where I’ll share my thoughts.)