Sunday, March 15, 2009

Did You Know? 2.0

There's a short little You Tube clip titled Did You Know 2.0 that really gives us something to think about. It is very frustrating to be living in a time of such great change and rapid innovation but to be unable to use it for anything more than something to fool around with in the evenings.

The technology is out there and young people certainly have the interest, but so many adults are self-righteously content to let it just drift by. Schools finally allow the internet to be used for information retrieval, but in the meantime the wired world has blown past us to a whole new level.

How many teachers and librarians are still grumbling about the unreliability of Wikipedia and its "come one, come all" approach? How many of them really understand what it is and how it works? Or, at a deeper level, the theories about why it works the way it does and what those theories can tell us about connections and groups and education?

In the meanwhile, time is marching on. Remember physics class? Every student passing through the door of a classroom is a bundle of potential energy and it's important for us to serve as a force that can set loose the kinetic energy stored inside. Each one we set in motion makes their own contribution to the positive feedback loop, and has the potential to pass it along to everyone they study with, work with or live with throughout their lives. The chain reaction starts here!

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