Thinking About Learning

Last night my family, including my 22 year old daughter and 16 year old son, gathered around the TV for a little family fun and watched the Democratic debate that was taking place right here in SC. (Are we geeky, or what?) As we listened to the candidates and provided our own running commentary, I kept trying to explain to my children what a ground-breaking event this was. For the first time ever, questions in a political debate were being asked by the “common man/woman” via YouTube. I kept saying, “This is so cool!” My children are used to their mother’s fascination with the joys of technology and its power in the world, and as usual, they sort of blew me off. The best I got from them was a comment from my son that there should be some kind of application of You Tube for education, and I told him that it already existed, and it’s called Teacher Tube. With the predictable eye-rolling, that was the end of that line of conversation. But I still find myself amazed at what an awesome thing it was that this debate featured questions from citizens around the nation instead of carefully framed questions from reporters. The Internet is reshaping the political scene of our country, as evidenced by the Obama Girl video which had been viewed 2,663,738 times before I saw it!

I felt the same type of amazement over the Live Earth concert. No other event in history has ever had that level of global participation. Every continent on the planet, even Antarctica, was represented. (As a sidebar, that concert was another example of techno-geek mom having to pull her supposedly “digital native” children into the digital world.)

It’s less than a month before the new school year begins. As I ponder my job transition from a classroom teacher to a technology integration specialist, I’m keenly aware of how far the education establishment has to go to even begin to adequately prepare our students for this flat earth. The way we go about choosing the best candidate for president is being reformatted because of technology. A world-wide audience can now be made aware of important global issues. Communication is no longer “business as usual.” How can we continue to teach in the same old ways, business as usual? Daily it seems, I’m reminded that there is an immediate need for a paradigm shift in American education, or our children will all be left behind. How can we initiate change from the grass-roots level? How can we transform instruction to be more relevant to the needs of our students in the real world of today?

Technorati:
teachertube liveearth edtech

I have decided to try to resurrect this blog. My original purpose was to provide commentary and think aloud about my own personal learning related to educational technology and how that meshes with the realities of our antiquated standards-based educational system. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not opposed to standards and accountability. I just think that our standards need to be updated to reflect the needs of students in our global 21^st Century culture.

The daily demands of teaching seemed to squeeze out any time to do this kind of personal growth learning/writing. Maintaining a blog for my students and parents about daily classroom activities was challenging enough time-wise, and this blog just fell by the wayside.

My professional life is taking a new turn for the coming school year, however. After 20 years of teaching (four of those in a Global Horizons classroom, a technology-centered environment), I am leaving the classroom to become a technology integration specialist. This was a very hard decision for me, because I love teaching. I had been at Red Bank for 14 years, and leaving there is like walking away from part of my family. But sometimes you just know that it’s time for a change, and there were lots of indicators that I had reached that point.

I am very excited about this career change! After spending four years living out technology integration in the classroom, I am looking forward to helping other teachers learn new ways to enhance the curriculum through the use of technology. My new work will push me to more actively pursue my own personal learning. I hope to use this blog as a forum to express what I learn on this new turn in my journey.

I’ve been reading The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. In the introduction, Campbell says, “Technology is not going to save us. Our computers, our tools, our machines are not enough. We have to rely on our intuition, our true being.” I find myself freqently pondering our rapidly changing world. Technological advances place limitless amounts of information at our fingertips and allow us to communicate with anyone on the planet within seconds. Alexander Graham Bell never imagined such a thing possible, but much later, someone else did. As we find ourselves immersed in the digital world, the possibilities are endless, but in which direction will technology drive us? Life is about making connections…everything meaningful in life is in some way about the connections we make…connections to ourselves, to others, and to the world. Technology and Web 2.0 provide us with powerful tools for learning and connecting with others, but I think that the more our lives become immersed in technology, it is imperative that we become very intentional about connecting with nature and ourselves.

Harold Stone wrote, “The great need of our time is for people to be connected to spirit; for people to be connected to a core of feeling in themselves that makes their lives vital and full of meaning, that makes life a mystery evermore to be uncovered.” In order to save our planet for the future, we need to be teaching our students to love nature. A friend recently shared a site that has some beautiful National Geographic podcasts. These videos are an example of a way technology can move us in healthy directions. Even so, we still need long walks in the woods! Sue Monk Kidd wrote, “Ultimately nature heals because it reminds us that as humans, we are nature.” Nature sparks the imagination and helps us get in touch with our inner core.