Well, I have to start off the official Learning is Change blog with something good. I can’t go from Discourse about Discourse, a blog and podcast that were very good to me, to an overly theoretical writing style or business-only approach. That just doesn’t work. I don’t think that way, and I certainly can’t write that way all of the time.
My writing is about making connections between the vastly different elements of the classroom, the pedagogy, the technology, and the entirety of educational institutions. It is not something I take lightly, but it is also not a humorless pursuit.
One of my students showed me mebeam.com the other day while we were having technical difficulties with uStream. He knew exactly what we were trying to accomplish, create a backchannel for a debate we were waging on censorship. So, why was it that while each student made the most astute comments in the backchannel, they had to continuously make the most ridiculous faces into the webcams. Why is it that the most engaging use of technology has to be both academic and absurd. Well, because we are dealing with kids.
Every time I try to get abstract and theoretical in my EdTech theory, my kids always have a way to bring me back. I want to always remember that my students will use the technology in whatever way they see fit, and it is up to us to both learn from them and to teach them. Sometimes, we see education, and they see the entertainment. We meet in the middle as often as we can.
There are so many middles that I am trying to meet within on this blog. The middle of technology and pedagogy, the middle of theory and practice, the middle of conflicting stakeholders (parents vs. students vs. administration vs. school board vs. etc.), the middle of online and offline, and the middle of tradition vs. change.
I will try to manage these middles on this new blog. It won’t be the same as Discourse about Discourse, but I hope to take the best of what was there and hone in on the most important aspects, framing them into something palatable to a wider audience. Please let me know what you think about the change. Leave me a video or audio comment.
