From the “Shameless Self-Promotion Dept.” comes this link to an excerpt from my book in Technology and Learning Magazine. I have to say, while the concept that I actually produced this thing is finally starting to sink in, it still feels pretty strange to actually see my name on a book.

And btw, if you have gotten a chance to read it, I’d love to know what you think. You can add some comments to my wiki if you feel so moved. The password is rww.
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Great articulation by Kevin Clark of a really important shift in thinking that we have to get to:

Politicians often rationalize technology initiatives by saying “We’re educating our students for the future, they need to know how to use technology for their future professions.” It’s not the technology that they need to know how to use. They can use it already…a lot better than your local representative. The connections and community-building that can occur within student blogs is what they need to know how to do.

This is similar to the interesting discussion from a post a few days about about mis-understanding blogs. It’s getting to be less and less about the tool and more and more about the opportunities the tools create, the “why”, not the “how.” And the “why we should use any of these tools” question is all about their capacity to build connections and community. It’s one thing to master the skills to create whatever artifact you want: PowerPoint presentation, claymation sequence, screencast, blog post…whatever. But it’s another thing entirely to know how to take that creation and use it to connect to people, ideally to other learners, and start conversations with them about the value and meaning of whatever it is we create. That’s the shift. Creation in the relative vacuum of the classroom can no longer be the final goal. It’s publishing. It’s teaching through that creation, connecting through that creation that we should be striving for.