Posts in Outside the Container

April 14th, 2010 in Outside the Container

My Life as a Digital Native

Sitting in class the other day, I was listening to my teacher, taking notes on my computer, and switching between screens, checking my email, Facebook, and Twitter. My first thought was, “what am I doing?” My second thought was “multitasking, of course!” I was still an engaged student in my class, but, instead of dozing off between the “one moment while I pull this up” or the “does anyone have a comment/response”, I was efficiently using my time to take care of my daily tasks Read Article

April 6th, 2010 in Feature Content, Outside the Container

Keep the Qi Free

Since it’s widely recognized that a better-educated populace makes for a better-functioning nation, shouldn’t the reaches of the Internet and our public libraries be rapidly expanding? Don’t we want to grant everyone – the renegades and the wise, the rich and the poor – more access to resources they want to use so they can learn, and learn, and learn Read Article

March 23rd, 2010 in Feature Content, Outside the Container

Learning and Transferring Self-Reflection Outside the Container

One of the blog posts I enjoy reading each week is Doug Belshaw’s “Things I Learned This Week.” Doug always lists a variety of interesting information and reflective items he has internalized over the last seven days. As I was looking at his post this past weekend, it reminded me of something that often goes missing in our traditional approaches to education — reflection beyond and between the classroom container Read Article

March 16th, 2010 in Outside the Container

Processing Information Outside the Container

If we believe that learning is a communal process, that growth happens via networks, taking information out of silos is a key step. It may not happen easily or without massive resistance, but education will eventually go the way of other information sources — outside the silos and into the organic back channel where everyone gets to participate in the flow. With that in mind, my thought is that it is better to get out in front of the wave rather than be trapped under it. That’s why I’m willing to go outside my comfort zone and push myself to learn new things Read Article

March 2nd, 2010 in Outside the Container

Lifelong Learning Can Begin Right Now

Work, study on the side, and maintain a constant pattern of renewal. While I have certainly modeled this for my kids, such lifelong learning isn’t something I can actually “give” them. They have to adopt the practice for themselves Read Article

February 16th, 2010 in Outside the Container

Generational Gaps

Today we are talking about digital books and touch screen devices. The current generation of kids, the iGeneration, is as native to these things as I was to a rotary dial telephone. We should keep in mind, however, that the rapidly evolving technology cycles won’t stop here. In fact, we are only a few cycles away from human-computer interfaces that will create a big gap between current teenagers and their children. Read Article

February 9th, 2010 in Outside the Container

Informal Learning — Lessons Learned from a Termination

The process we employ along the way may vary some, but the general elements of informal learning are pretty simple. They work for every kind of knowledge and they are what determine our ability to keep growing in understanding and awareness Read Article

February 2nd, 2010 in Outside the Container

Beat Poets and Cops — You Don’t Have to Take Your Container with You

We are living in exciting times in education. In the next decade we will witness more evolution and revolution in learning than has occurred in my entire life. There will be transformation. I encourage everyone to see this as a time to start over, to build new containers of meaning and definition Read Article

January 19th, 2010 in Outside the Container

The Long View

With the crush of information coming our way, it’s important to take a step back and take the long view of things. This is particularly true when talking about trends in technology Read Article

January 12th, 2010 in Outside the Container

Prepositional Change — From “in” to “on”

It’s funny how the smallest of words can be signs that point to some of the biggest changes. Take a preposition like the word “in,” for example. I used to look words up “in” the dictionary Read Article