I didn’t “coin” the term, either. It went around in teaching circles briefly as a code word for partnering with local businesses to expose students to the “real world.” That seems to have gone by the wayside along with the web pages that used to refer to it.

I home schooled other people’s using a consensus run small group format for 6-12 year olds in which we used the community as the primary learning resource. Instead of bringing a bunch of kids about the same age into a room, bringing a bunch of resources into the room and then telling the kids what to do with them, I did the opposite. I got as age diverse a group as possible, went out into the commnunity with them to discover resources and then worked with them to figure out what to do.

The business model wasn’t sustainable, though that was in the late 90’s and online support resources didn’t exist yet.

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Enjoy,

Don Berg

Site: http://www.teach-kids-attitude-1st.com
Blog: blog.Attitutor.com

It is difficult to attribute these terms to anyone, though. Although I’m the first person that I recall using it, I don’t know all knowledge.

A while back, I used the term Web 3D, and was accused of “stealing” the term from another person when in fact, I’d never heard the term, it was just a natural progression for me. The other person had used it years before me, but did they “invent” the term, I just don’t think so.

Terms just seem to evolve – however this is an important term to use, I think. (See http://www.slideshare.net/coolcatteacher/google-teacher-academy-vicki-davis-keynote-part-1/ from this summer).

We need to give teachers the ability to customize our classrooms and to shape the curriculum to meet the objectives instead of having prescriptive things handed down.

I do think, that where these sorts of things go astray is when people “steal” terms and don’t attribute, but that is something we’ll never know as it is in the heart of an individual.

We at the Dallas School of Music have been in the business of music education for over 15 years and I believe that privatization can be a win-win situation for both the student and teacher. In our case, we offer world class music education to people of all ages and all levels of ability – on all instruments. That’s something academia cannot (and does not) do.

I also believe that privatization can actually SAVE our entire profession. As budgets dwindle and arts/music courses are slashed, shouldn’t we be training future music educators to be more business savvy? In the very least, they should be made aware of options outside of academia and entrepreneur courses should be included in their curriculum. There is no doubt that more teacherpreneurs would make a better, healthier environment across the board.

Kudos!