One of the things that we all need to be able to do is constantly learn and understand and articulate what it is that we do and why we do it.
It's only fair to us and to those that we speak to. It provides a context and allows us to explain our vision and thoughts about the future as well as the present.
One of the things that will be a challenge for us all will be the evolving content and application of the internet and internet applications.
Gary Stager is a well-known constructivist speaker and one of his presentations is entitled "If blogging is the answer, then what is the question?"
It's a catchy title, to be sure, but also goes to the bigger question. It is the bigger question that is helpful as we try to meet the future and our students' needs.
For you bloggers, can you answer the question?
So, what do we use the internet for? If the answer is "to look stuff up", then I would suggest that that answer misses the boat. We live in a world that is just full of "stuff".
I would suggest that simply looking it up is a very low level and perhaps even trivial use. From the Student Reference Portal, we have a link to a page of subscription databases. You can find lots of stuff there.
However, we're realizing that we need to provide a more engaging and productive environment for learning. Making the connections and challenging the premise of some of this "stuff", having online collaboration, and using the tools of the web prepare our classes for more useful activities. Immersive activities, put in context, make all the difference.
Why the internet though?
On the horizon, we're going to use "the cloud" for more and more main stream activities. In this page on my wiki, I compare a number of sources for software. There are still vendors that will happily take your money for application after application. If you study the chart on the wiki page, you'll see that you can outfit a computer quite nicely at no to low cost, if you wish.
It begs the question What will your next productivity suite be?
It also begs the question. What will your next computer be? Will it be a desktop computer? Will it be a laptop computer? Will it be a netbook computer? Will it be a portable music player with a computer processor at its core?
Can you answer these questions? Can you explain what you do and why you do it?
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