If you are not reading Mark Pesce’s blog The Human Network you really should start. But more importantly if you are in education you should carve out some time to read a recent series of posts he has published which all focus on education. Actually I suspect that these are the published versions of a series of talks he gave at a recent Australian educational conference. At any rate I find Pesce to be one of the more provocative thinkers on the internet and matters of cultural transformation. I am not sure I always agree with what he suggests, but this is also one of the reasons I find him worth reading.
While all of the posts are connected, and a similar theme runs throughout, each has a slightly different angle. Start with Fluid Learning the first in the series, then check out The Alexandrine Dilemma and Crowdsource Yourself, ending with Inflection Points. Seriously most of what I read on the web I read once, tag it, and thus file it for later reference if I need it (and usually never think about it again), in this series I read each piece at least twice, some three times. They are that good.
Thanks-I am going there now, and adding it to my reader!
Well, Fluid Learning was hands down the best thing I’ve ever read on technology in the classroom. Thank you.
Thank you so much for posting this – I just read “Fluid Learning,” and will work my way through these other posts.
I’m a grad student in English and teach argumentative writing, and integrating my interest in the digital humanities with my teaching of argumentative writing has been somewhat of a struggle (as writing instructors, all graduate students at my institution, receive very little pedagogical training regarding technology). Thinking about the “disruption” of the computer, and its potential to undermine the authority of the institution, has made me re-think my own position as a graduate student instructor, my relationship to authority, and the use of technology in my writing classes. (I have been reluctantly using Blackboard, but will be switching over to an open source blog or wiki format next semester.)
Thanks for posting!