I am currently reading The World Is Open by e-learning guru Curtis J. Bonk. It is a great book so far and am holding comments until I am finished with. However, I had to share a paragraph that hit home with me. It comes from chapter three, E-Demand Around the Globe and he is talking about different online learning opportunities.
Although there are scores on online learning optimists and pioneers, as well as myriad examples of innovative uses to justify such optimism, there are also many who admittedly are more hesitant, reluctant, or resistant about technology’s role in education. Like medieval European sailors who hugged the shoreline and relied on familiar landmarks, many teachers will not give up the lecture, the canned drills, rote instructions, and twenty years of dog-eared lecture notes. In education, our safekeeping selves too often suppress our risk-taking selves. But with such safekeeping comes an earth with a different soft of familiarity, accompanied by redundancy, complacency, and dryness. In a word, boring!
I also have to share another passage from the same chapter. This time is is a quote from Florida Virtual School president and CEO, Julie Young.
Part of my passion as an educator is to help other educators understand how vital it is that we be willing to pioneer withing this new “open” world on behalf of our children. If you think of pioneering days of old in this country, no one would have dreamed of sending children out to forge a trail to the West ahead of their parents. Yet, so many parents and educators today are willing to throw up their hands and say that they just aren’t good at technology or they are just too old to change their way of teaching. That’s the equivalent of sending our kids into a wilderness with no map or compass. We have to be willing to provide the maps and the compass so that when the get out into this new open world of instant access, they will have guideposts, warning signs, and even a moral compass to keep them on a productive path.
Two great points that should be taken to heart by educators everywhere. If you have added The World is Open to your reading list yet, you are missing out on a great book filled with to-the-point commentary on the wealth of learning opportunities out there.
