Having Fun - Will Richardson

Last night I added a 30-second message to the start of one of my seven-year-old daughter’s favorite songs, loaded in on my iPod, and “surprised” her with it when I got home. It was easy. It was fast. It was fun.

Sometimes I really marvel at how fun this all is. It’s fun to:

be almost constantly learning, not only by pushing my limited envelope with the tools but reading and thinking about intruiging ideas from really smart people.

watch the tools evolve in ways that teachers and students can put them to good use without spending hours and hours to master them.

be a part of a really amazing community of educators who are constantly challenging me.

have an audience.

see the ways in which other teachers and students are kicking their own tires with these concepts.

fail, try again, fail, try again, and finally get it right. (Add more failures as necessary.)

blogvangelize.

watch society and the world change from technology in important ways.

have big ideas.

have relevant information come to me.

know some things a whole bunch of people don’t know, at least for now.

think about what the future might hold.

Every now and then I feel the need to bow down and thank whatever is out there for my good fortune, especially when world events rightly remind me just how lucky I am.

Anne Blocker says

January 5, 2005 at 8:23 pm

>Will writes:
Every now and then I feel the need to bow down and thank whatever is out there for my good fortune, especially when world events rightly remind me just how lucky I am.

We are constantly reminded that it is smarter to be lucky than it is lucky to be smart. We began our venture into the unknown in July of 1988, bringing with us every notion of what works but was not yet applied. We formulated a plan: we would take technology and apply it to socioeconomic problems. At the time, that was easier than getting the problem experts to embrace technology. We set a goal we could remember: 8 x 8-8-88, eight solutions on floppy disks by August 8th. The method that came after the goal was reached was fun. Follow the accidental meetings wherever they lead us. I am laughing. No matter where you start, all roads lead to education and learning. This year, they led us to Weblogg-ed and I am still learning here.

I am thinking today about the mix of information and beliefs about education in our culture that lead us astray. After fourteen years of school research, we have a laboratory full of findings and evidence. Yet, we have not a single bit of evidence that supports the idea of an inevitable Bell Curve.

Today, we worked on a virtual green card, a way to teach American values, opportunities and economics via the Internet. I watched Roomba clean the floor better than I can. My computer and printer created a document on stem cell research and I listened to a book on Vietnam, In Their Own Words on my iPod. I taught the geography of South America to 100% mastery and recall in about fifteen minutes. I demonstrated the similarities between programs that taught facial recognition for terrorists, the Greek icons of saints and the Senate Intelligence Committee. I created a QuickTime movie of our unusual white Christmas using The Raleigh Ringers digital recording of Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from my iPod — to preserve the spirit of the occasion. All this with technology unimagined fourteen years ago (or 114 years ago when Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was creating the Nutcracker Suite).

On the other hand, my electronic security system locked me out of my own car this morning and my printer, low on color, printed out the stem cell papers automatically, but in pink. I learn when things are more funny than fun. As technology enriches our own lives, I wonder what it does to those who don’t have it.

Comments

Anne Blocker says

January 5, 2005 at 8:23 pm

>Will writes:
Every now and then I feel the need to bow down and thank whatever is out there for my good fortune, especially when world events rightly remind me just how lucky I am.

We are constantly reminded that it is smarter to be lucky than it is lucky to be smart. We began our venture into the unknown in July of 1988, bringing with us every notion of what works but was not yet applied. We formulated a plan: we would take technology and apply it to socioeconomic problems. At the time, that was easier than getting the problem experts to embrace technology. We set a goal we could remember: 8 x 8-8-88, eight solutions on floppy disks by August 8th. The method that came after the goal was reached was fun. Follow the accidental meetings wherever they lead us. I am laughing. No matter where you start, all roads lead to education and learning. This year, they led us to Weblogg-ed and I am still learning here.

I am thinking today about the mix of information and beliefs about education in our culture that lead us astray. After fourteen years of school research, we have a laboratory full of findings and evidence. Yet, we have not a single bit of evidence that supports the idea of an inevitable Bell Curve.

Today, we worked on a virtual green card, a way to teach American values, opportunities and economics via the Internet. I watched Roomba clean the floor better than I can. My computer and printer created a document on stem cell research and I listened to a book on Vietnam, In Their Own Words on my iPod. I taught the geography of South America to 100% mastery and recall in about fifteen minutes. I demonstrated the similarities between programs that taught facial recognition for terrorists, the Greek icons of saints and the Senate Intelligence Committee. I created a QuickTime movie of our unusual white Christmas using The Raleigh Ringers digital recording of Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from my iPod — to preserve the spirit of the occasion. All this with technology unimagined fourteen years ago (or 114 years ago when Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was creating the Nutcracker Suite).

On the other hand, my electronic security system locked me out of my own car this morning and my printer, low on color, printed out the stem cell papers automatically, but in pink. I learn when things are more funny than fun. As technology enriches our own lives, I wonder what it does to those who don’t have it.