I’m gathering up links and ideas for my upcoming “Wikis @ Your Library” presentation at the CIL Conference in a few weeks, and I want to make sure that I’m not missing any good stuff to show the thousands who will no doubt be in attendance. Well, maybe dozens. Anyway, if you use wikis in your library, know of wikis in libraries, or have great ideas for wikis in libraries, please let me know. Just post a comment or e-mail me at will at weblogg-ed dot com. Thanks.
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Ok, so I wasn’t planning on spending a good chunk of my morning reading what for me at least is a pretty heady argument for edcuational change, but I happened upon this one sentence that REALLY resonated, and off I went:

Today, however, intense pressures for change now come directly from technology and the economy and not ideology or educational reformist ideas, with an expanding global economy and novel technologies demanding innovative skills, competencies, literacies, and practices.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about too, the idea that these technologies will in and of themselves demand a rethinking of the current educational system, which, if left unchanged, will simply become obviously irrelevant to the ways of learning and working in the connected, “authorship society” we’re entering.

If that turns out to be true, I suggest we fasten our seatbelts immediately…

I highly suggest you carve out an hour or so to read Douglas Kellner’s most interesting ideas.

Today’s selectee is Barbara Ganley:

One of the promising aspects about classroom blogging (and how some students take the blogs and run with them both inside class and out, really making them about much more than classroom discourse as they feel their way through the choreography of their many writing voices playing out on the screen, switching from one to another post by post, something I observed even on a class blog last fall) is how the blog invites students to “take over,” to leave the teacher behind and to put their own voices, their own inquiry, their own concerns front and center. It takes time for a group of students unaccustomed to such a classroom experience to open up and let ‘er rip, but once it happens, they do a better job using the blog well than any of us cyber-immigrants could dream of doing.

And the question then becomes, once they do, are they learning in ways that prepare them for their futures more effectively than the traditional methodologies 99% of educators are still using?

I’ve been grappling lately with just how wholeheartedly to embrace the “all information is now socially constructed” meme that’s building out of the Read/Write Web environment. If true, if we are entering an era where the information we rely on is in constant flux, under constant collaborative revision, then we really need to rethink the literacies we’re teaching our kids. They’re going to have to become much more engaged in their own learning, be able to participate in the discourse, the give and take. They’re going to have to be editors with serious critical thinking skills…problem solvers…negotiators.

In other words, they’re going to have to be bloggers.