I’m currently at the AzTEA conference in Tucson. The people are as hospitable here as they were in Flagstaff. My message was well received, and we had a very interesting discussion as a breakout session. The frustrations are similar everywhere, and our visions are the same. We simply have to figure out how to craft a compelling story about the 21st century classroom and go out and tell it — to everyone.
Over lunch, I was talking with the president of the AzTEA and the director of technology for the Flagstaff school district. We were talking about instant messaging, and how surprised we are at how useful it really is. I talked about my wife texting me grocery lists while I’m writing at the coffee shop. Somebody said, “It’s like floating post-its.”
I thought that was a very cool way of thinking about it.
I love the imagery that “floating post-its” conjures in the mind. We have a university educator in New Zealand who has written about the power of metaphor when working with students. Suspect that we would better understand the role of ICT in education through metaphor creation like this
Creating a metaphor and communicating it to others helps children to get to the essence of an idea. The process of metaphor-making can also be an emotional event, tapping into the inner world of the child and revealing issues of personal and social import to the child. This opportunity to explore social and emotional issues through metaphor can be both a cathartic and self-enhancing process. And as a corollary, Feinburg and Mindess (1994) claimed that metaphor deepens children’s understanding and involvement. Dr Deborah Fraser Sin, Hope and Optimism in Children’s Metaphors http://www.aare.edu.au/00pap/fra00393.htm