When I look at the median-aged/experienced teacher, those of us with about 15 years or so under our belts, I can honestly say that most of my colleagues in that category are working hard on a daily basis to find ways to teach better, doing anything to make learning happen. We care, and that is more important than anything else in my book.

In Ecclesiastes, a book from somewhere in the middle of the Bible, written by King Solomon, he write that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Solomon did not use a pencil to write those words. He may not have even written them by his own hand, but by dictation to a scribe. In any case, Solomon was putting out his thoughts, and I can read them today, even online! The medium is not as important as the act of movement toward learning itself, which requires instruction and learning. Hop from scribes to the innovative, world-changing printing press, to radio, to film, to television and so on, I will give sworn testimony, to the best of my estimation, that innovation does occur in regard to the medium and the content. The process, though, remains relatively unchanged. I can guarantee that I could find a way to bore my students with loads of web 2.0, and that even the best technologically sound teaching practices will leave some students still feeling lost.

Perhaps the saying, “Publish or Perish” from which you may have derived your post title is moving toward obsolete, but I’m old enough to rethink the “Innovate or Die” mentality. It really takes a village. I would want to live in one that has wireless access, of course, but still....

If you take as much responsibility for your learning as you require of your teachers, you will be a success in anything you aspire to. It takes a lot of tries over a lot of time to gain mastery of anything. I look forward to seeing you in about 10 years! I think your prospects are looking good.

I also appreciated your comment against passive acceptance of information from the media, though I will say that the generation before yours is who began the pushback and currently enable it.

I am interested in your description of teaching back and wonder if you could comment more on how you think that could happen.

Given that, my question to Anthony is Where’s the Beef? .
Show me a Student 2.0.

George Hotz is one, he hacked the iPhone as a summer project. It got him all the “certification” he could have hoped for from a university degree. Where are the others?

If Student 2.0 is needing some help getting started, beyond twittering and naval gazing in a blog, then let me suggest some ideas:

The UN has a mechanism for people to ask for or become volunteers on projects. Joan Oviawe used it to start the Grace Foundation.

MIT’s ThinkCycle Project (currently offline Oct 8/08) is described here in the context of how the idea might play out in a land grant university.

Or you can find your own problem and build a community around it as Margo Tamez demonstrates in her work on the US-Mexican border.

Want help thinking this through? Ask. We’d like to see more Students 2.0. ]]>