Wednesday Says It All

Seth Godin has a new book out called The Dip. It's about hitting that point when you can either continue forward or give up. It's a quick read, only about 80 pages. It has some great ideas and, as usual for a Seth-book, is thought-provoking. The concept of the book really has me thinking about the field I am in, education. Questions The Dip causes me to think about:

1) What do we do in education that we need to quit doing?
2) Does education today make any sense at all for the children we are educating?
3) If it's a digital/information-based world, why aren't school's more digital?

Education has changed since I was in school. Major changes, in fact.

I think back to two individuals who had an impact on how and what I believe about education. My high school English/journalism teacher at Elk Rapids High School, Sally Ketchum, taught her students a great deal. I will always remember the "Red Hot Tips" she would share with her students and make them write into a notebook. I took meticulous notes in the "Red Hot Tip Notebook," but didn't need to. She wrote a book including all the tips after she retired from teaching. She also talked about how we were a part of an as-yet-unnamed generation: The Age of Information.

Another individual was Eliot Parker, a photojournalism teacher at Central Michigan University. In 1990, he made us send him an e-mail and talked endlessly about how the Information Superhighway would change the way we communicate, think, and operate. We 18- and 19-year old kids thought the guy was a quack. Three years later, he made an advanced photojournalism class do a report on a primitive topic, electronic photography. He thought about the future, made his students do the same, and years later I still think about the impact he has had on many people. I wish he had a blog so I could keep up with his thoughts!

Thanks for tuning in!

(Who's had an impact on you?)