Merry Christmas

Interesting video

Just had to post this video posted to YouTube by my nephew. While driving in the UP, he happened upon a deer that decided to run along with the car.

Thing 23, I made it!

Well, I made it to Thing 23, but I'm not done—not by a long shot. As my philosophy of education above suggests, I believe there is always more to learn. This is especially true when it comes to technology and education. I love the video presented in this thing, but I do have one disagreement. One of the people in the video mentions that creating a shift in the way education works begins with the teacher. I, on the other hand, don't think you start with the teacher. In my experience, it isn't all that difficult to get teachers on board IF (and this is a very big if) you have two very important things:

the appropriate technology

the time and resources to provide the necessary teacher training.

For these necessary items, you need to start higher up, with the administrators and school board members. These are the people who often don't yet understand the significance of technology for education today, yet these are the decision makers without whom the two necessary ingredients will never be provided. One of my goals going forward is to help these decision makers fully understand the paradigm shift that is coming in education. Videos like the one in Thing 23 and courses like this in general will help in that regard. Once we bring on board the administrators and school boards, they can work to send these ideas up the ladder to the state and national level so that maybe ultimately we can begin to escape the NCLB testing mentality and get back to actually helping kids learn rather than just pass tests.