Since most of my classmates (which is an odd term, as all our classes are online; classdigimates, maybe?) are educators, I often am stymied by my place in this setting. It's difficult to move past the theory of education, or my understanding of teaching - which are based largely on my experiences as a student in neolithic times. I was a child of the 70s, and survived typing term papers on an IBM Selectric. (Oh, the horror - life before digital cutting and pasting...oh the lost hours spent with typewriter ribbon and whiteout...)
But the goal of being literate in this present - and future - era of technology must clearly involve skills like reading, writing and arithmetic. The concept of 21st century literacy may be far more comprehensive, and potentially more richer, than those learned back in the day. But some questions occur to me, such as what do students need to know, when knowledge is just a mouse click or two away? And how we really discern between good and bad knowledge, when so much content is user-generated? What does this mean for the value of the information?
Motivated by Ken Robinson's concerns about creativity, and its absence in the classroom, I've been doing more reading on the subject. I highly recommend reading "Out of Our Minds." Just started "The Element" last night. I'm very very grateful that I went to school at a time when funding for the arts was encouraged. I came across this video the other day, an interview of Howard Gardner, a little intro into his theory of multiple intelligences, which complements Robinson's creativity premise of learning.
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