Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Catching Up With Ourselves

Stephen quotes Graham Wegner:

Look around at some of the (US ed-tech blogs) he suggests and you'll find that some of the issues that US education is exploring as 'things to do' are already 'things being done' in many areas of the globe.

Those things are already being done in the US, too.

4 comments:

Graham Wegner said...

Hi Tom, I was referring to Stephen's list of edublogs in general (not just the US ed-tech blogs) but that is probably my clumsy sentence structure coming to the fore. Your last sentence is of course correct, but you wouldn't know it by reading many of the often praised and quoted US edublogs. Some that I'm thinking of have attracted your ire in the past. For example, when people drag out ideas like standardised tagging and hold up inquiry learning as something new (although Web 2.0 does add new possibilities in my mind) when many education systems worldwide have practiced these more learner centred methodologies since the 1970's, then the message going out to "us in the rest of the world" is that the only important ideas and issues in the world of ed-tech to be discussed are US based. That's why this particular view of Stephen's resonates with me.

My apologies if this comment is unclear.

Tom Hoffman said...

Yes Graham. I didn't mean that as a criticism of you. We're on the same page.

Stephen Downes said...

Good point.

Graham Wegner said...

Tom, I didn't take your post as personal criticism, but as offering an ideal opportunity to clarify my point of view.