This has been a pretty slow blogging week, primarily becuase yesterday we kicked off a full year pilot of about 35 tablet PCs in the hands of teachers from every discipline at our school. I ran a two-hour training that was one of the most fun sessions I’ve ever done primarily because of the kick of having the tablet and being able to walk around the room using the stylus to navigate it, everything being projected via wireless connection to a screen at the front of the room. Amazingly cool technology, I think.

I haven’t written too much about my tablet use, but I can’t imagine life without one at this point. I’ve had my Toshiba M200 for about a year and it’s become attached to me, literally. Ironically, Josh Marshall posted about his use of a tablet yesterday and I think it’s a great overview of the tool.

The best part is that today in the lunchroom a actually heard one of the pilot teachers say “Yeah, and then after I write all the notes on my presentation I can just throw it on my blog so the kids will have it.”

Chills…

Last year I wrote that the Internet Law Program at Harvard was “one of the most profound learning experiences of my life” which is why I’m heading back to Cambridge next week for this year’s gathering. I’m really psyched to see and hear Lawrence Lessig again as he’s become one of my true heroes (right up there with Ernie Banks.) And his supporting cast is pretty impressive as well.

The really incredible part is that I’ve been asked to “host” one of the Thursday dinners and come up with a theme that program participants can choose to attend and discuss. I decided to title mine “Open Content: The Shifting Nature of Originality in the Collaborative Commons.” I figured hey, this is iLaw, and high-fallutin titles will probably work. On the other hand, now I’m thinking that I’ll either be eating alone or the conversation will be so far over my head that I won’t be have anything to add.

But it is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, something that I actually tried to broach at an administrative team meeting here this week. I haven’t totally wrapped my brain around it yet, (in fact it’s still very murky) but it feels like there’s a big change we’re going to have to make regarding how we think about the content our students create. Something that deals with the fact that more and more stuff will become collaboratively constructed online, and that we’re going to continue to gain more and more access to ideas and observations, and that somehow all of that is going to shift our traditional labels of what it means to be creative and original. Something like that. All thoughts welcomed, as usual, and please let me know if you’ll be traveling to Hah-vaad next week.
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