My first thought is that hacking sounds like an important idea, but really? Do we need another word that takes teachers out of the mainstream “common core” standards conversation? Does hacking get my students more college-ready? Like gaming, isn’t hacking just another thing that pushes the risk-takers into the margins, and makes risk-adverse teachers run? How do we find a way to be more inclusive in our language and processes? Is it just a language thing? What else might we call hacking?
When we hack properly don’t we have to pay respect and homage to our sources? When we started the Monopoly hack, I was thinking that school would ask us to spend more time talking to each other about our experiences with the game, looking at the history of the game, calculating the way the current game works. Even if it would be better to jump in the way we did here, eventually we would want to do a better unpacking of the original game as we created our game. Purpose would also scream out. Why would we want to hack Monopoly? What is our purpose?
So part of why we hack has to do with understanding our sources more deeply, and this is absolutely an academic concern. But don’t we need words like “analytical reading” and carefully sourced research? Right so what else might we call hacking? It’s about creativity, but it’s also about making new things by really understanding the old, and this is a traditional, academic exercise.
I’m looking for language that will encourage the risk-adverse teacher to join with us in these enterprises.
