Thanksgiving for a Learningful Harvest
If our students are the digital natives, and policymaking powerful are the arriving settlers in the New Digital World, what kind of feast are we celebrating this Thanksgiving?
After a long year (or decade) of trying to understand each other and make peace about what learning really is, are we finally sitting around the same table to celebrate a bountiful harvest? As some spokespeople from the Old World seem to be wavering about using exclusively test-driven methods, we see signs that some have come to appreciate alternate ways of harvesting learning. The corn of this New Digital World is the creating/sharing web. Look at the bountiful spread on the table this Thanksgiving. We truly have much to give thanks for:
- Free tools for teachers and students. Beyond the freemium munchies, we actually have heaping servings of wikispaces and Edmodo and so many dishes we cannot fit them on the table, some without advertising garnish.
- Mashed up potatoes of every kind. The Goo(d)gle Earth has brought forth quite a harvest.
- The centerpiece: A turkey we all agree IS a turkey and need not weigh and measure to tell that is ready. At least for today we can call it learning without measuring its precise statistics. Breathe in the aroma of learning.
Oh yes, the cranberry sauce: the teachers. Without cranberries, the feast lacks color and the catalyst to so many tastes.
May this feast continue and become a tradition. We would have reason to give thanks for a long time.
