The Holidays have left me with about four half thought out blog posts and I can’t seem to get myself into the right headspace to finish them off. I think maybe I’m taking them too seriously, so instead I think it’s time for more of a stream of consciousness post.
I just finished reading Will Richardson’s heads up regarding his Educon 2.1 presentation (oh, how I wish I could go) entitled “What will classroom learning look like?”. He has collected some great resources on this topic in a google notebook page and asks for the participants in his discussion to peruse them beforehand. His actual presentation is going to be more of a facilitated group discussion. What a great idea. With google notebook it is easy to collect a series of clippings and links on any topic and publish them immediately. Why aren’t we using this more in the classroom as a way to front load student knowledge before they come to class?
Will’s notebook page led me to a blog post by Mark Pesce called Fluid Learning. It is a long post and I can’t claim to have read the entire piece but what I came away with was that sites like ratemyprofessors.com are putting more and more control in the hands of students and leaving less control in the hands of the institutions. The quotable piece that stuck with me was:
The lesson is simple: control is over. This is not about control
anymore. This is about finding a way to survive and thrive in chaos.
I believe this. But I’m not sure this is the best message to use to try and empower overworked and unconvinced teachers to try using more technology in their classrooms.