Affluence

There have been a few ideas tossing around in the back of my brain for the last week as the material from both of my classes collides like the sea on rocks. The first concept that jumped out at me was that of social affluence. We really are privileged to be living in a society where the majority of people can retrieve whatever information they need in a matter of minutes. The more connected and knowledgeable people are, the quicker the information will arrive.

Clarence Fisher mentioned that teachers should be network administrators and be responsible for hooking kids up with information. I believe that most teachers think that that is what they are doing. However, as we all are becoming acutely aware, what we believed as a solid method of delivering knowledge and how we can deliver a truly authentic learning experience are quite different. I think back to how Clarence connected with the African community and his students truly learned about race, poverty, AIDS and a number of other social situations by walking a mile in the other person's shoes and not just reading about it in a book or listening to a lecture on the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

We are living in a country and province that has the ability to turn every classroom into a global communications center. The only questions are whether we, as teachers, will give up the notion that we have to be the experts instead of collaborators and can we convince the technology people at central offices to allow us to have full access to the internet so that we may hear the stories of other people and cultures?

Mathman33