Holistic and Integral Education

You never know who's listening... and learning...

A few days ago I 'virtually' attended a local meeting for technology educators called MEGA at the Friday Institute in North Carolina, USA. Physically I was in Tasmania, Australia. One aspect of today's so-called "flat world".

David Warlick, a member of the group, was blogging the meeting live with ongoing comments and pictures and I was commenting on his blog as he did so. He later wrote about this exchange in another blog.

"Matt's presentation was followed by a fun session with Len Annetta, and his efforts to help teachers become video game developers. During the meeting, I was moblogging (mobile blogging), writing for about ten minutes in 2¢ Worth and then submitting, thanks to the facility's ubiquitous wireless access. About halfway into Len's presentation, I noticed that I had two comments on my blog. I pulled them up to discover an educator who had caught my ongoing commentary of the presentations in his aggregator. He was Googling some of the terms that I mentioned and included some of his insights about the term, stealth learning. As this exchange continued, he offering his AIM screen name so that we could strike up a chat during the presentation. I clicked the man's name to pull up his blog, holistic and integral education, and discovered that he was in Tasmania."

I found the experience fascinating - I actually felt I was there... whispering to someone in the back row. Many of my students would have loved to have been there to hear the speakers... As David says:

"I only just realized how much this exchange underscored the importance of the first presentation -- how important it is that we engage our students not only with highly interactive software, but engage them with the world that they are learning about, make them a part of the global conversation. The world is incredibly connected today, and we are still figuring out what that means. We're fairly sure, though, that in order to succeed and prosper, you are going to have to be part of that global conversation"

I left before the session finished - via a back door so I didn't disturb anyone - and re-emerged on the other side of our flatter world :-)

Labels: collaboration, communication, global, ICT tools

posted by Roger Stack @ 7:34 AM