Thing 3: The Lost Dr. Seuss Creation

I haven’t looked at my reader since I set it up about a week ago, but I already find the content to be slightly overwhelming.  I can appreciate why people like rss feeds.  The fun of having it all on one page is sort of nice.  But I have to say, if I want to read the sites I love, I would just rather visit them.  The reader makes me feel like there’s too much to catch up on.

Anyways, the interesting thing about this post was that I had never really thought about the difference between creativity and art.  It is true that many teachers tend to stifle creativity in lieu of structure, but I try not to do that.  Yes, guidelines are a constant in school, but creativity can exist within the lines.  I’m not saying you can’t beat yourself over the head with a fish and call it a biology demonstration, but creativity can fit within the box, while still allowing expression.

Oh, and here’s the link: http://students2oh.org/2008/11/19/of-creativity-art/

Blog reading is like having a snack.  I promise this analogy is going somewhere.  Novels are the big meals, the heavy hitters.  When I read one, I’m sated and satisfied for quite a while.  But blogs are small bites, and I can read a dozen posts without feeling too heavy.  Blog writing can be similar to a novel, full of details and a running narrative.  Or it can be a small glimpse of a life, short and to the point.

I think that commenting on a blog can help the writer, but for someone treating the blog as a journal, can ultimately not matter.  Sure, it may make you feel validated to know that someone out there in webspace is reading your thoughts, but what does it matter in the long run?  The words are your own, and I feel that a blog is meant to maintain your own personal sanity.  As for blogging literacy, that really depends upon the person.  I love grammar and spelling, and can’t imagine not wanting to carry that through to anything that I write.  But text speak does permeate the internet, and there are many people that use that in their blogs.  Literacy is in the eye of the beholder.

Of the several blog posts I read, including why I don’t assign homework and turning on a faucet, I enjoyed teaching brevity and ssr 2.0 the most.  These blogs did give me another perspective, especially ssr 2.0.  They show that the world is becoming brief, snatches of time that people can read during breaks.  Part of me (the ADD part of me), loves this.  But the other part of me wonders what happened to attention span, when tv was a science fictional idea and books were entertainment.  Blogging, while revolutionary and helpful, may hurt us in ways we can’t know yet.

Write a reflective blog post based on the 7 1/2 Habits of Effective Lifelong Learners. You may write about anything related to your own experiences or beliefs about Lifelong Learning, and your thoughts about this course. The three things you were asked to consider were:

• Which habit(s) may be most challenging for you to employ as part of your K12 Learning 2.0 experience?
• Which habit(s) will be easiest, or are most resonent for you as a lifelong learner?
• Which habit do you think will be most important for you as you work through this course, and why?

Alright, the most challenging.  I’d have to say that would be being a teacher/mentor to others in my field.  As a first year teacher, newly graduated undergraduate, and beginning graduate student, I feel that I have very little to contribute to educators in my field.  Knowledge and Wisdom comes with experience, and as I have yet to experience even a year of teaching, I can’t, in my mind, contribute any knowledge or wisdom.  I’m hoping that as I progress in this year and in this class, I will feel more confident about expressing my opinions.

The easiest habit for me would be using technology to my advantage.  As a very near-member of the younger generation I’m trying to teach, I’ve grown up with technology as a constant.  Using computers, iPods, and the internet has never been a problem for me, and I can’t see any technology they can come up with as ever being an issue.  To me, technology is a love, and to be able to use it in the classroom would just make it that much more important in my life.

Now for the most important.  I think viewing problems as challenges might be the most important habit to learn, not only for this course, but for my future education.  Every assignment I’m given always seems to be a speedbump rather than a ramp.  I need to learn to take each assignment as a learning experience, rather than something to be done on the way to learning.  Everything I do is important, and something can be learned from everything, even if it’s learning not to do it again.