Are you getting your ticket for the unfinished plane?

We need a new analogy or medaphor or whatever it is when we say, "We're building the plane as we're flying it."

I'm an old science teacher, so I'm pretty sure it's physically impossible to build a plane and fly it at the same time. If that's the case whatever it is you are associating with this is doomed to crash and burn. I'll gladly sell back my ticket for another trip thank you.

Yesterday in our Principal's Role-Alike at the end of the i11i 2010 conference in Des Moines, IA, that sentence was thrown out as a representation for learning and teaching using one-to-one computers and other disruptive technologies. In the "unconference" room we trashed the same sentence because the Iowa Department of Education was using it to describe the Iowa Core Curriculum during it's trainings this past year.

We do not have the time nor the vision to plan out these two new, and rather ambitious, initiatives (build the plane on the ground). The two will require a lot of risk-taking behaviors and some trial and error. But let's not visualize ourselves 20,000 feet in the air attaching a set of wings. Not even Chesley Sullenberger III can land that plane in the Hudson. How about a more grounded thought like...

"We're setting out on a great expedition into the vast Jungles of Learning..." or something like that.

Like we can over-plan, we can over do. Those of us who are doing one-to-one and other progressive learning with Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies have many of the right ingredients. Let's develop a recipe for learning that everyone can enjoy.