Hi classmates. I'm missing you and hoping we might start using our blogs. Jori, is yours being used, yet? Yours looked the most classroom ready. For the rest of us, I want to share my favorite new "big thinker" named Alan November. He was the last person I heard speak at a national conference last summer and his ideas really stuck with me. I've been listening to a lot of his podcasts lately and have burned a set of them for the district administrative team. I think they, and the school board members, need to be aware of the shifting ideas about what is important in this "flattened" world. If you don't know Tom Friedman's work The World is Flat, I can send you a link to a lecture he gave that is wonderful and sets the tone for the rest of the podcasts. I found a blogger's copy of a podcast of the lecture I heard last summer, so burned that as well, followed by interviews between November and Dan Pink, and November and Yong Zhao, all of whom really guide my thinking about technology in schools. There are other great interviews (in addition to Pink and Yong) at novemberlearning.com. If any of you listen to those and want to chat, join me here!
