C4T #3

For C4T #3 I was assigned Mr. Will Richardson’s blog Read. Write. Connect. Learn. Will Richardson taught public school for 22 years, founded Powerful Learning Practice, and has had three books published as of August 2011.

Comment #1

My first comment was on Mr. Richardson’s blog post Announcing: Raising Modern Learners.

In this post, he announces that he and Bruce Dixon have launched a new undertaking called Raising Modern Learners. Richardson calls this a growing effort that he hopes will help teachers, administrators, and board members by sparking initiative about changes in the education system. They will post a blog dealing with one theme each week and try to implement (Google) Hangouts and podcasts, among other things, for parents.

I told Mr. Richardson that I thought this was an amazing endeavor. I told him that I believe parents play a more crucial role than most tend to realize. I asked him how far he anticipated this effort to reach, and told him that I hoped it would spread far and wide.

Comment #2

I read Mr. Richardson’s post Playing Chopsticks With Technology for my second comment.

In this post, Richardson posts a Q&A response from Alan Kay. Alan Kay is president of the Viewpoints Research Institute and also an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of Califonia, Los Angeles. His post points out the problems we face when trying to utilize technology into education. It is definitely a good read. I love that the post points out that “the music is not in the piano”. Regardless of what tools we use, we need to let students learn, imagine, and create.

I agreed with Mr. Richardson on his view of this, and shared my thoughts and goals as a future educator. I stated that because of standardized testing and fact memorization methods, we lose the ability/opportunity to allow freedom for actual learning.