I just came across the concept of FedEx days. I read about it in this blog about professional development at a K-12 school. http://lynhilt.com/inspiration-delivers/

Then I did some research. First I watched the videos that were mentioned in the blog.

1. The RSA Animate version of Pink’s Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us:  http://vimeo.com/15488784

2. Two questions that can change your life: http://vimeo.com/8480171

3. What’s your sentence?  http://vimeo.com/14888034
3b. Final “What’s your sentence” video :  http://vimeo.com/18347489

Then I jumped to wikipedia to look up FedEx Days Atlassian and found NOTHING! (Atlassian is the Australian company that came up with the FedEx day idea.) Gasp! I had found something so new it wasn’t in wikipedia?  I knew I needed to spread the word.

What would happen if an institution of Higher Education went to a four day “class meeting” week and used the fifth day for autonomous learning? Like Google’s 20% time or McKnight’s 15% time at 3M? No scheduled meetings. No expectation of working on homework, no class readings, just learn on our own. And that would mean almost everyone, not just the students. Faculty, researchers, staff, students would all take a break and be autonomous, deciding what their goals were, who they worked with, and what they did.

The FedEx day is a single day (24 hours from Thursday afternoon to Friday afternoon) where everyone works on anything they want, with whomever they want. The only requirement is that, just as FedEx delivers over night, participants in a FedEx day must deliver something at the closing session (party?) on Friday afternoon.

The 20% time is a chance to work on something over a longer period, but still autonomously. At Google, Atlassian, and 3M, things developed during the 20% time became major products. For example, gmail at Google and Post-It Notes at 3M both came out of 20% time projects.

Before reading any of this I had gone through my calendar and marked one day a week as a “No Meetings” day. I think I was realizing my own need for FedEx days, 20% time, and autonomy. There is so much happening in my area, educational technology, that I have to set aside time for me to reflect, learn, and produce things that will make today better than yesterday for me and others.

My sentence seems to be my vilberg.com signature: Spreading seeds of education, technology, and more. FedEx Days seem to be a “more.” Let me know if this seed finds any fertile ground in you.

<ASIDE> In my model, the 20% time at a University should be on Wednesday. Then classes would be paired Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday, giving 2 and then 3 days off between classes. Currently we have the strange Tuesday and Thursday classes with 1 and 4 days off between the two sessions: quite unsound pedagogically. </ASIDE>