Not so new, but John Pederson has been doing some hard-hitting blogging of late. (I don’t think I could send these e-mails to my staff…though…) But last week I landed on his eduriff of the Cluetrain Manifesto (courtesy of Doug Johnson) and got stopped in my tracks. Here’s my favorites:
1. Learning is conversation.
6. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
7. As a result, parents and students are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked learning changes people fundamentally.
8. People in networked learning have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another and the Internet than from textbooks and worksheets.
14. Schools that don’t realize their learning is now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.
21. Smart learners will find schools who speak their own language.
25. The community of discourse is the learning.
37. Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills schools.
67. To traditional schools, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.
68. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.
Now if only we could start these converstaions with the people in charge.
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