It’s holiday time. I’m not gonna be around these parts for the next four days as I’m taking a much needed blog holiday to visit with the fam, watch other people eat turkey (Thanksgiving just hasn’t been the same since we went veggie), read one of those paper things with words printed in it, and dive into big piles of leaves with my kids. Bliss…
But before I go, I figured since this post is going to stay on top o’ the blog for a few days, I might do another one of those reader participation posts that seemed to liven things up around here last time. So, here’s today’s challenge…
We’ve already ascertained that the Web changes everything now. (Right?) But there are still a lot of burning questions that we need to think about (if not find answers to) as we move forward even deeper into the throes of this interactive, collaborative, conversation-laden space. I’m hoping we can start a list of the big ones. Here are a couple to start with:
I’ve got about 300 more, but I’m sure you have some as well. Please share.
Thanks to all of you who through your willingness to write, read, push back, throw things, etc. have contributed to my learning this year. I am sincerely thankful to be a part of this community.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I’ll start with “Happy Thanksgiving” & enjoy your weekend! (Normal weekend here in UK)
Looking at your questions …
What can each of us do to get every single kid connected to the Web as soon as humanly possible?
It would be *really* nice if we (i.e. the West) could learn lessons from the way that they are envisaging the $100 laptops to be used. (http://laptop.media.mit.edu/)
Not only is the concept good, also the idea that they’ve made them nice & robust & able to be in different formats. I am looking forward to seeing what could be done on a much smaller budget than we seem to think that we need.
What do we do when the sum of all human knowledge is online?
No idea! I suffer from Information Overload as it is!
In answer to your first question……
We can advocate for equity, advocate to bridge the digital divide, and advocate for continued funding for technology. ETAN, the Ed Tech Action Network (http://www.edtechactionnetwork.org/), is a good place to start to sustain funding. This network has been instrumental in influencing our legislators to fund technology when the Bush administration has pushed to reduce such funding. All educators committed to the value of instructional technology – those who are convinced that it transforms our teaching and learning – should join and become active in this network. Due to the efforts of more than 2500 ETAN members who sent 7300 emails to Congress, the House of Representatives, just this month, rejected the conference report on the Labor, HHS and Education Appropriations bill, which would have slashed the Enhancing Education Through Technology program to $275 million, a 45% cut over last year.
What’s going on at the MIT Media Lab is, of course, quite exciting. I heard Bonnie Bracey speak this week at the NYSCATE Annual Conference and she had some thought-provoking facts regarding the digital divide – a divide that many refuse to acknowledge.
The second question seems to imply that knowledge is finite…I can’t agree with that in principle.
Great responses…but I wondering what other questions people have. What else do we need to figure out in this new world?
Dean Shareski suggested this question to me via his podcast (http://shareski.blogspot.com/2005/11/podcast-10.html) the other day. As students and teachers begin to publish more and more of their work, both on the Internet and in private school networks, how do we teach students (and teachers) the difference between what should be public, what should be private, and what should exist in the middle spaces? More generally, what learning should be public? Private? Somewhere in the middle?