"Life In The 21st Century"

Having read the link you gave and the origional article, it seems that these two authors were coming at the question to link or not to link from the question of money. Which makes more money, to give origional content, or to link to others' work. The answer is determined by your answer to this question...What's the point of your blog? And then I thought about this more when I read the "blogging vs journaling" post. Is the point to engage in academic discourse with others? Is it to simply put on a screen your daily itinerary? Is it to make money (although I'm not sure how that works)? But it goes back to what is the point of your blog? Are we then talking about different genres of blogs? Perhaps we now need to subdivide bloging as a whole...perhaps "jologing" for jounal-type blogs, and "dislogs" for more academic-discourse blogs. What do you think?
 

Wow Mary,

I have to say your questions certainly "have me THINKING." The question to link or not to link? would have to involve the person(s) posting. Yes? When I was in broadcast News we oftentimes would have news stories be the result of a newspapers clipping. So therefore (correct me if I am wrong) that's similar to syndicating information. If a point of view is linked to an expert, than I think it's okay and probably the reason why blogs are becoming the "mainstay." Again, that's a huge MAYBE. As far as money and educational discourse I am finding that by blogging, the field of education is truly growing and is similar; or ready for the next step. Blogs are a result (in some cases) of respecting the experts in their noted fields of study. I truly learn something new everytime I read what others are doing in the way of education. I also feel a part of the whole process of SHARING (for lack of a better term) At least that's how I have been impacted by blogs. Thank you for the time you took to read through and assess this post. It really has helped me.
--Amy
 

btw...you have an awesome blog!
 

You said,

As far as money and educational discourse I am finding that by blogging, the field of education is truly growing and is similar; or ready for the next step.

What is the next step that you see?
 

Oh, and thanks about the blog!
 

I think educators are now having dicourses outside of their own "at home" arenas. Money can never be associated with education because it's always about the students. The next step (in my view) is taking students into the 21st. century with education; their now (so to speak). The "one room school house" of the early 1900s is a thing of the past. See my latest post (via Dartmouth) and see what higher ed. has realized about education and technology. This is their future. We as educators have to figure out how it fits into the present. What do you think?
 

I completely agree. Reminds me very much of what Marshall McLuhan said in Understanding Media:

The young people who have experienced a decade of TV have naturally imbibed an urge towards involvement in depth that makes all the remote visualized goals of usual culture seem not only unreal but irrelevant, and not only irrelevant but anemic. It is this total involvement in all-inclusive nowness that occurs in young lives via TV's mosaic image...It is, of course, our job not only to understand this change but to exploit it for all its pedagogical richness.

and

In education the conventional division of the curriculum into subjects is already outdated as the medieval trivium and quadrivium after the Renaissance...Continued in their present patterns of fragmented unrelation, our school curricula will insure a citizenry unable to understand the cybernated world in which they live.

I completely agree with you that it is our job as educators to catch up to "their now." (hence my new journey into the realm of the blog!) I look at my kids, especially my four year old son whose computer skills in some respects outstrip mine, and I know that if education is to be at all relevant to students of the "digital" age, the education system, and the educators have to learn how to incoproate 21st technology into the classroom, and to strive to be one step ahead in our own technology literacy.
 

I know exactly what you mean. My five year old and seven year old both have computers. CBS did a piece on my school in March on this very topic. www.kewforest.org
it gives very helpful information re: learning in the 21st century.