Reflections

It’s New Year’s Eve and we’re out exploring eastern North Carolina.  I hope to be able to share some magnificent pictures tomorrow.  Or not!  We’ll see.

I selected this creative commons licensed photo because it is a miraculous photograph. But also because there was this look of expectation on the child’s face, that nourishing water will soon be flowing from that spigot.

I guess that it is somehow appropriate to share some reflections on the previous year today — and wishes for the next year tomorrow.  That part I’ve been working on already.  But this morning, it’s simple.  This has certainly been an important year for information.  The new web has continued to evolve and to give us lots of new ways to access, think about, rework, and communicate information.  What’s more, more people are talking about it.  It could be that the sensationalism, through which blogging was presented by the media, got these tools out there with such bluster, that the backlash toward realizing them as a tool for teaching and learning may be more effective than would have otherwise been possible.  I don’t know.  I tend toward the positive spin, often naively.

At any rate, I see a momentum building with regard to teachers and schools wanting to experiment with these new information applications.  But I see another momentum building that I think is even more important.  There seems to be a new spirit of re-visioning going on.  For the first time in years, people are beginning to think about teaching and learning as something that might be done differently and better, rather than something that is simply done with more force. 

I’ve seen this in my own state with its work toward Future-Ready Students and the broader and increasing interest in the work of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.  I think that my own message about contemporary literacy has fallen on more fertile ears lately because of this sense of re-visioning.

As much as people have gotten tired of the mantra, I suspect that The World is Flat has had a lot to do with these changes.  Many new ideas have found avenue for expression, but largely because Tom Friedman has given us a new way of thinking about a world that is rapidly changing.

I suspect that the next few months and years will be an interesting and invigorating time to be in education.

Happy New Year!

Image Citation:
Smith, Gregory. “The Fountain of Youth….” Carf’s Photostream. 4 Nov 2006. 31 Dec 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/beija-flor/288487084/>.

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8 thoughts on “Reflections”

  1. David, thanks for all your work this year to help educators. I attended your presentations in Hartford, CT this fall. I’ve now begun a series of workshops with our teachers on using Web 2.0 tools. They are all learning blogging, RSS feeds, AJAX pages, podcasting, social bookmarking, bloglines, and more! And they are loving it! Thanks for your information, your inspiration, and your continued dedication.

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  2. Hi David – I have to agree with your comments about the momentum building about the new technological opportunities that are arising. It is also true that many teachers are re-assessing what teaching and learning is all about. At my school we, like a handful of others in the UK, are completely redesigning the whole school curriculum. To create something that is unique to the type of children that attend our school; that has much more joined up thinking; has an balance of excellence and enjoyment.
    It should be an exciting year.

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  3. This time last year I would have had a hard time articulating any kind of personal vision for education. I knew that our school had lots of it and that it was somehow beneficial, but we had little collective vision for what we were doing. Don’t get me wrong, we did good stuff, we just had no idea as to the true power of the tools we had in our midst.
    A year is a long time. I have had the opportunity to attend a couple of conferences and experience the vision of others. But more importantly, I have made a personal commitment to exploring the possibilities of change. I read “The World id Flat”. I inhaled several edublogs on a regular basis. Along the way, I took David’s challenge and immigrated by starting my own reflective blog. I was given the opportunity to take on a leadership role as a technology mentor (coach). And it just keeps rolling…received a call a couple of weeks ago from the Faculty of Education at our local university inviting me to (re)design and teach a course on Technology in Education starting next month. (OMG, next month is tomorrow!)
    Our school is also beginning to share in the vision. Every teacher uses blogs for home/school communication, many are using student blogs for class discussions and I am now working with a few in brining wikis and podcasts as we knock down their classroom walls and develop collaborative projects with other classes, schools and experts. It’s all so authentic and real.
    There are still some who resist. Many are intimidated by the technology. Some see it all as extra effort. A few fight change, truly believing (mostly out of ignorance to the fundamental shifts in our global environment) that the old ways are better. But, on the whole, we are making our way forward, and most teachers welcome the opportunities.
    2007 should be exciting.

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