Constructing Meaning

Artwork: (c) Hugh MacLeod (Twitter, Blog)

I just received an Education Week email update and the second article listed was this one written by Betty J. Sternberg. She begins the article:

Consider this description of the work environment of California-based Meebo, one of the Web’s fastest-growing messaging companies, and then ask yourself if today’s classrooms can be described the same way:

“A great team, and tons of meaty problems to solve. … It’s open, collaborative. … We’re facing problems that are pretty unusual. … We take the smartest and most passionate team-oriented people we can find and put them in an environment where they can thrive. We value innovation, teamwork, and good clean fun. … We’re still a small company, so one person can make a big impact.” (more…)

I came across the following statement at the AASLS Smackdown wiki this morning:

According to The Associated Colleges of the South, “using critical thinking skills and appropriate technologies, information fluency integrates the abilities to:

• collect the information necessary to consider a problem or issue
• employ critical thinking skills in the evaluation and analysis of the information and its sources
• formulate logical conclusions and present those conclusions in an appropriate and effective way” – Information Age Inquiry (more…)

I was reading my Google Reader feeds yesterday and came across one by Todd Lucier at The Clever Sheep. His thought highlighted a constant refrain that seems to permeate education, “When have we arrived?”

Todd’s assessment about the effects of the change factor in education is spot-on. The situation is more acute than in many other areas of society, caused by education’s lagging behind the wave of change that is constantly sweeping over us. I am not sure if Todd was musing or lamenting, but the “end points” he mentioned are an underlying problem, which impedes any progress in educational change. The idea of an “end point” stifles possibility by suggesting that a perfect destination is quantifiable. The real question is, “Is there really ever a destination to be arrived at?” Politicians and society in general want schools to “arrive” so they can be comfortable in sending their children inside those walls. This perpetuates the idea of a final destination where we can all sit back, breathe a sigh of relief, and proclaim, “We have arrived. (more…)

I am days away from completing a two semester program that will take me in a new career direction. That is both happy and sad. I love learning and being able to keep intellectually challenged, I will miss  that. However, I love new challenges and looking at the unknown horizion, map in hand.

A significant part of my plan is to return to my blog and be more focused in my writing. Though the map is heading me toward the legal and policy side of education, my heart remains in the classroom, with students, and hearing the voices in the marketplace of ideas among my Twitter and FB educator friends. I hope to be, even tangentially, a voice of revolutionary thought in the rethinking of American education.

@tylerbreed tweeted a link this morning to one of my favorite blogs (which due to my own course work I haven’t kept up with since last September) and I received a nice shot of invigoration from the thoughts in David Warlick’s post: The Continerless Learning Environment. (more…)