How has the year made a difference....

Learning. How do we teach and how do students learn? This is the question at the root of everything teachers do. Students need curiosity and a way to be engaged. They need to see a relationship to what they feel is important. So how do we bring our teaching to the world of 2009, where kids text, tweet, and wear headphones to match their outfits.

I see the future of libraries and schools changing. I can envision a "school" of student sitting in their own homes, using their own computers and not gathering together and not having a teacher in the room. I see a Ben Bova or Isaac Asimov plot come true.

I question the value. People need People (Barbara Streisand did a great job of getting this message across.)
Web 2.0 activities have brought many of the activities the students come knowing how to do but which they use more often for entertainment. To take these and teach them as skills captivates as well as educates.
I am reading "Love of Impermanent Things." I feel that way about some of the tools we were exposed to in the MILI experience. The tool will be impermanent. The concepts will be around. Social media. Connections on line. Data bases.
But the particular ones may disappear.
Lego Logo, HyperStudio, Mac Classics.
It takes a while to get comfortable with something. Master it and it changes, it disappears, it is replaced. It takes a curiosity and a confidence to make the time to master something in these days of impermanence.
Bravo to the participants and presenters of this class.