Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Last week I wrote about Konrad’s efforts to instill real learning from his blog he has for his students.  I think that speaks for itself as to how a teacher should blog with his/her students. But I still have a hard time convincing teachers to blog for professional reasons.  Statements like, “Why would I just blab my thoughts”, “Who would want to read about my experiences”, “What if I say something I shouldn’t”. 

All valid points but I recently re-discovered Dan Meyer. Dan is a young teacher who, just like most teachers, is full of great ideas,insights and is willing to share. I like the fact that Dan is honest which means, be prepared to disagree with him at times. But what’s wrong with that? Although Dan is a math teacher, his understanding of design and media has rekindled my interests in his work. Why does he blog? What’s in it for him?

His about page really tells the story.

I’m Dan Meyer. Three Four years ago I lucked into a job I love. I’m a high school math teacher stationed outside Santa Cruz, CA, and I get better at this job every day I keep at it and keep pondering my wins and losses. This is a documentary of all the fun I’m having. My purpose here is practice not policy. I’m leaving NCLB and charter schools to the wonks and ‘wizes. (For the most part.) This blog goes out to the classroom grinders, to the teachers handling the tough classrooms. Let’s figure out how to make this job better and easier. So no ads. This is for the joy of working hard at one of the hardest jobs there is. As much as I hope this is valuable to other teachers, I hope most for input from the outside. Please leave comments. The input of good teachers has always been valuable to me.

’nuff said.

Technorati Tags: danmeyer, blogs, teacher, classroom

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Many will have already seen this but I’m wanting to insure no one misses this. From wikipedia:

Professor Randy Pausch delivered his “Last Public Lecture”, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” at Carnegie Mellon University on September 18, 2007 [3] During this lecture, Randy Pausch was very upbeat and humorous, rapidly switching between standup comedy, insights on computer science and engineering education, advice on building multi-disciplinary collaborations, working in groups and interacting with other people, offering inspirational life lessons, and doing one-handed push-ups on stage.

This talk was modeled after an existing series of lectures where top academics were asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical “final talk”, i.e., “what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?” And in Randy’s case, this was more than an academic exercise. Before he even started speaking, Randy got a long standing ovation from a large crowd of over 400 colleagues and students. When he motioned them to sit down, saying “make me earn it”, some in the audience shouted back “you already did!”.

This is just one of those must see kind of things. Watch it and then show it to others.

Technorati Tags: randypausch, inspirational, speech, lecture

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