November+2010

November 16 (Already)
Life has a way of crowding in. I wonder sometimes about people who have the discipline to write something every day. Ray Bradbury comes to mind. I am still learning new things every day about on-line learning, blended learning environments, the effectiveness of 1:1 laptop initiatives & all things related to 21st C learning. I've also learned that I do not really like the name "21st C learning", because it does not really help to define anything. It makes as much sense as calling something "The Ten a.m. Initiative". At least the Renaissance and the Enlightenment had cool names. You'd think we could give this sea change a name instead of just a number. Then again, maybe giving a number to a digital age is ironically apropos.

Yesterday I met with two teachers who teach the bulk of the on-line courses in this jurisdiction. Distance learning used to be for people far away from one another. Now we can learn (& teach) anywhere at any time. I really do send emails to students who are less than 4 metres from me in class. Sometimes this is more effective than a shout out or a whisper. I wonder about just how revolutionary all of this will be in a world where a ride in an airplane is still a rare experience (if you could poll all 7 billion of us). Something like 500 people have been in space- I heard that one the other day too. I wonder how common, ubiquitous, assumed, and ultimately essential high levels of technology will be for human life on this planet or in its neighborhood.

But that is then, and this is now. Now I have 24 notebooks in class, with fairly reliable filtered wi-fi, and a bunch of Canadian kids who use info tech on purpose or by accident every day. I wonder how their kids will use this stuff, and about how this stuff will change, and about how it will change us as well. May it make the world a better place for all of us, and not just some of us.

November 22
Just finished a conversation with a colleague about the benefits of Twitter. It seems to me that most teachers see microblogging as a "writing" tool, and miss out on the idea that Twitter really is powerful when it is viewed as a "reading" tool. I read all kinds of interesting and informative stuff that is posted by those that I follow on Twitter. In fact, Twitter has become my daily dose of PD- I'm following credible people with an established web presence, and learning a whole lot about what it means to be a teacher in the information age. I am new to Twitter, and I think I've only posted about 20 "tweets". Still, the //**network of people**// that I've met through Twitter is very powerful, and continues to inform my practice and shape my thinking.

November 25
Up late at night working on the CAN presentation. Not ever having done it before I do wonder how it'll work. I think the logic is tight enough, and I know that it will also create the kind of dissonance required to make it a truly synectic activity, assuming that the participants play along. My journey into all of this has been more hard fought and at a greater price than I thought when I started, but I also know that nothing truly good is also truly free. "You get what you pay for" is often true. I wonder if it holds true where 21C learning is concerned? Stay tuned, sports fans. Anybody who knows me well would tell you that I'm not a tech guy, and I think that is part of why I'm enamoured of all of this, because it really is about learning first, teaching and pedagogy second, and tech third. Sure, all three matter, but in that order, hands down.

November 27
Up late again. Grey Cup tomorrow. Figured out how to use Symbaloo tonight and then Tweeted it out to the Universe: "I would like to share a webmix on Symbaloo about: New Now Teachers. Check it now at: @http://bit.ly/hc51Ci. Hope I spelled your name right!" The whole "New Now" thing is a way to avoid tech talk or 21C  fin de siècle   buzzword-banterisms. I'm all for inventing new words, but sometimes the old words work well. If anything, the "NewNow" is a bit of a portmanteau. Weirdly though, all of the consonants remain the same, and the vowel is the switch in the middle. The Symbaloo page took me a while to create, but it was pretty intuitive to use. I'm thinking about introducing it to my students as a visual alternative to a bookmark aggregator like delicious.

November 30
Last day of the month. I am evermore aware of the impossibility of knowing even a smidgen of what is possible to know. I've been following #edchat on Twitter, and I'm always surprised at the level of discourse that it possible at only 140 characters per tweet. Also, the tone of respect and professionalism is sustained, and I find that refreshing. Dedicated educators in a self-monitoring PD forum; very cool. The speed and the depth of the conversation really makes it impossible to soak it all in. I remember a friend named James describing to me the moment when, as a young teen, he realized there was no possible way that he could read and absorb every book in his home town library. The realization came to him as a sad fact. Even with books alone, infowhelm is possible- how much more so now that we are in the information age.

But I don't think that "knowing it all" is really any sort of a valid measure of "knowing enough". "Knowing it all" is a fallacy- this stuff is more about knowing how to apply the bit that you learn along the way. Knowing isn't what it used to be- [|G. Siemens] and the [|connectivists] know that knowing is changing. I'm starting to think that they know what they're doing.