Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Is technology for the "doing" part of learning or expressing "Essence"?

During the past six months I attended two seminars entitled, "Radical Leadership" ( from People Builders) that were transformational in my day to day way of personal inter relationships. The basis is from an excerpt of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Over-Soul" which differentiates the "eating drinking planting counting" side of our lives to the "essence" or passion of our lives. As I see it, in schools, technology is still considered for the most part to handle the "doing" and "counting" part of learning that students and educators complete from "bell to bell". The descriptors for "doing" are surviving, chaos, confusion, controlling, resistance, draining, fear. (Does this sound familiar!)

What I have been reading about in my last two weeks as a newbie blogger is how I see educators and students tapping into the "essence" of technology. The descriptors for "essence" are wisdom, creativity, vibrantly alive, expand, acceptance, abundance, inspiration,energizing, trust...to just name a few. Essence is from the heart, passion, and the "goose bumps" part of life.

When you think about the teachers that have been innovative and the ones that students learned the most about life ....were they the teachers who went through the mechanics of doing...or the passionate educators who embraced the passion for teaching and making a change? I think the answer is obvious. The latter are the individuals that will be the leapfrogs in this movement to the Web 2.0 technologies.

No comments: