Thursday, August 11, 2011

I'm Giving up my Watch, Maybe.

I have decided to stop wearing a watch or, as Sir Ken Robinson calls it, a single function device. I am certain that this simple act will suddenly transform me into a millennial person, a person, like most 20-somethings, who can do whatever they want with technology. A person for whom technological facility is second nature and automatic, or so it seems to me.

I ponder these thoughts as I try to come to terms with the changes in thinking required by my new web-editing program, Expressions, and my new Word and Outlook programs. As a pre-digital person , it seems to take me forever to make the changes required in the routines I have struggled to learn in during the 20 years of the existence of the world of computers. I'm off to take a workshop for all this in a few moments so hopefully my techno-journey will be eased somewhat.

All joking aside, I sometimes think that the educational process today is much more a two-way process than it used to be. I will learn a great deal from my students this coming year about the uses and value of the technology they bring to the classroom.

The Ken Robinson TED, by the way, is part of a series on Education that he has made. Each one is provocative and makes you think about what we take for granted. I've always thought that advances in Education occur through evolution and not revolution but having listened to several of the Robinson TEDS I'm not so sure. The problem is that we tried revolution once in the form of New Math in the 60s and it was a total disaster. However, his insistence on the need to move away from the "industrial revolution model" for schooling seems really compelling.

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