Web 2.0

Thoughts today on how people are valued. 

Do we (I) value people by what they produce?  How about the student who does not turn in work?  How about the student who accomplishes things I do not see or "evaluate"?

Yesterday I observed a student who rarely does homework yet he comes in almost every morning and helps take down the chairs for all the desks in my room.

How can I meet the interests of that student?  What would be worth "turning in"?

Online Image Generators

Okay, not over the top creative! This is a great picture of students working together to build a Lego model that represents photosynthesis. I was going to use another photo but could not figure out how to turn the photo on the Image Generator (or the caption either).

Time Flys When Your Having Fun

Creativity in education has been a pressing topic for me lately. Two thoughts have bubbled to the top this week:
1. My goal as an educator is to stimulate creative thinking in students -- self-motivated, independent -- not dictated (I am way off the mark)
2. Can I now allow students to create not regurgitate?

The first is tricky. An edgy boundary between students frustrated, lost and the successful ones.

The second sounds unpleasant but is what the 21st century student will need to be. What do you think?

Iron Sharpens Iron

What a blessing to start with a few RSS feeds that are powerful writers on topics I want to learn about! These authorities provide me with so many new links and threads to follow and add that I rarely have to search for new feeds from other places. Using Google Reader as my feeder is great because it does provide new ideas for sources if I want them.

How Pervasive is Your Web?

Recently I have come to appreciate the ways that technology has allowed me to come in contact with writers and conference speakers, teacher and leaders that I would otherwise never "know". For instance today I listened to an extremely engaging fifty minute free lecture by Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat) on Academic Earth. Through ten or 15 RSS feeds I am able to network to so many fascinating new avenues of knowledge that challenge and enlighten me as well as cause me discomfort and lead to eventual change. The stretching tentacles of my PLN is what I am appreciating most about technology right now.

technology

technology, originally uploaded by zinkwazi.

With today's students it will be interesting to see how wide the technology gap grows from child to adult. Will we get to a point of saturation where individuals want to go back to simple personal communication? What generation will stop the more and faster? We know flat is better -- technology does give us that.