Like other folks, I was surprised and annoyed about the end of life announcement on Google Reader. This is something I use everyday (but I guess I'm only one of a few thousand...not several million) and I rely on it for getting a great deal of good ideas sent directly to me. Tonight I had a thought that it might be a good thing. Did Google Reader stunt my own growth and curiosity to read about what many others have to say? There's tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands or more...) of educators out there sharing what they're doing, what they're thinking about but don't have the bully pulpit of Larry Cuban or Will Richardson. It certainly doesn't mean they have lesser things to say. Mostly they right about their own action research they're doing right now - very useful things to read for practitioners. In the last few weeks I've divorced myself from Reader and used other avenues to get my information from. Tonight I came upon this nice post on Instructional Rounds from Jody Landish - principal at Waukesha North. I would have never come upon it in my walled garden of Reader. So here's to looking at on bright side and hopefully to a more open, flat and diverse reading experience.
I'm glad a few years ago I introduced the book 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times to our administration. It was exciting to have an assistant superintendent interested in changing the conversation for learning in our school district. While I still certainly appreciate the content of this book, I am soooooooo sick of hearing about 21st Century Learning, 21st Century Skills, 21st Century ad nauseam . Isn't there a better way to phrase this for everyday conversation? Perhaps we need to stick with this so everyone hears consistent jargon, but I don't think people overall have the right idea of what it means. I would imagine if we polled our staff or parents they would say its technology or computer skills. That couldn't be further from the truth. If I say higher order thinking skills I think that's pretty clear (at least to me) of what that means. I worry 21st Century means the Jetsons or Star Trek to all too many people. I appreciate Tony Wag...
Comments
Post a Comment