Thursday, January 14, 2010

Social Justice and Learning

The worlds people are in need, and so many are acting as global citizens to help.  Innovation and world systems may need to change to address a post-earthquake Caribbean, and indeed need to change to curb the ecological overshoot we face collectively as a world.

The students I teach and learn with yearn to help others and are doing so in democratic learning environments using salient eLearning tools like Mahara and Diigo

This is human nature.

Are your learning spaces  co-created and enabling learners to connect with the world through tying curricula to their values as global citizens?

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Learning and Lemonade

I sent this post to the ACTEM listserve this morning and feel like the time is now for a bit more blogging....no promises as school is on, but I will try to lay down some more thoughts on a regular basis.

Not to barge in on the multitude of important issues being discussed, but a recent blog post from Seth Godin caught my eye and applies to what many of us are doing as 21st century learners and educators.

Seth's post deals with innovation.  In a simple scene he sets two lemonade stands against each other, one traditional and one new in many ways.

In the traditional setting things are predictable, easy to measure and accepted.  In the new setting the issues dealt with in the traditional setting are absent and replaced by an enduring understanding of the process by the young woman selling lemonade and the consumer.

Education is like a lemonade stand. We can move or systems to highly mobile, agile, and authentic experiences, that inherently will look different, assess different, and inspire differently.  Or we can make our traditional systems "better" with new technology, labs,enhancements of traditional power structures, and "better" traditional curricula (AP and other standardization).

Maine has an amazing chance to break the mold of educational systems and look to new and visionary learning systems. Are we?