PLENK2010 Information Overload

PLENK2010 My son was telling me that some scientists want to genetically modify human beings so that we can see ultraviolet light as bees and other insects do. I immediately saw it would change everything--it would end the world as we know it. "Oh, no. Do we have to?" I asked.

I think it is really good for teachers and other adults to go back into an environment where thy are learners. It has been very exciting meeting new people, new ideas, and practising new skills. But it is exhausting work. We need to be reminded that our students are working hard, too.

Today I had a wonderful experience using Skype to teach a small group in Jim's classroom far away in the Northwest Territories. I saw them. They saw me. Jim had prints outs of my pdfs and projects his slides on the classroom whiteboard, too. It worked out really well, and we're going to do it again.

We were expecting lots of things to go wrong, but they didn't. The technology was very good. Of course, we weren't expecting it to do too much, but it didn't break down, and it didn't get in the way. A much bigger class might pose a problem, but we'd figure that out. There may be a time, when we want to try Elluminate instead. Maybe blogging or whatever. We'll see. Maybe the students will have some interesting ideas.

But we would never even have met had we not signed up for this course. Thank you Stephen, and George and Rita. And thank you all of you wonderful people who are contributing to the success of this course.