ProfessorTOSA Blog

As mentioned in my last sentimental entry, I have been preparing for another conference. My last excursion with my district took me to Monterey, California. There, my friends and I learned about all things Web 2.0 and listened to Mark Prensky and Will Richardson make sense of ed/tech climate and tools. It was amazing and it was truly overwhelming. Today I have taken a bit of my lunch break to peruse Will Richardson’s blog, Weblogg-ed and catch up with one mover in the industry.

If you haven’t read Will’s blog, you should. He’s a rather well known educator and he does well to illustrate current trends in technology as well as focus much energy on what is being called the, “shift” in education and technology. Many likely see Will as a techy educator who seems to speaks code and eats all things wired for lunch. After some reading and listening to him present, however, I have found him to be a very human individual – a teacher, a father – and many of his ideas and rants then seem much more human and more appropriate to me than someone who understands the working side of things and little of the personal side.

Understanding this about Will helps me to understand his blog more appropriately. His latest entry calls for action in the Darfur region of Africa through a blog call the Many Voices for Darfur. Prompted by another blog post, Will’s decision to post on something so rooted in the larger picture of this world caught me off guard and prompted me to write this post. And I think this is the nature of what this community of tech educators is working to promote, change. Change in the lives of our students achievement; change in the lives of the oppressed. The Darfur project is something obviously worth looking into as is the blog which provided the start to this conversation, but the great realization for me is that Mr. Richardson is selling little. Rather, Will is collaborating in a grass roots movement to change the manner in which the world communicates, learns, teaches, and lives – as a whole.

And so this is what I think I am trying to do – motivate teachers to work globally and teach their capable students how to problem solve, become editors, and change portions of the world that need changing someday. As of now, I’m not sure as to how successful I have been, but through my work with students, I’m certain there is change occurring and that’s all I need to keep movin’.