Come Blog with Me

When I was first approached by my colleagues about creating an RLA blog, my initial response was a huge groan— in fact, I think I let out a colossal ugh. Don't get me wrong. I really like the idea of an educational blog, but. . . well, technology is moving way too fast for me and seems to be overtaking many aspects of my life—the biggest being time. To put it in perspective, I'd like for you to indulge me by listening to a story of when I was your age.

            About 35 years ago, when I was in the sixth grade, I was given an assignment by my teacher to research and try to better understand what life was like when my grandparents were of school age. It would have been helpful to be able to Skype my grandfather, or email him for that matter, but these technologies had not yet been invented. I could have called him, of course, not using a cell phone mind you, but instead using a landline phone, not even cordless, but I didn't do that either as that was too expensive since he lived long distance. Instead I wrote him a letter and mailed it to him, which is referred to nowadays as snail-mail. When was the last time you hand wrote a letter, put a stamp on it and mailed it to someone? Do you even know how to address an envelope? I just read an article yesterday saying that mail delivery will soon cut back to only five days a week. No more Saturday delivery, since personal mail is so rarely used anymore.

            The interesting concepts that I learned from my grandfather (who was born in 1898) was that in his lifetime he saw the inventions of the radio, airplane, car, telephone, the vacuum cleaner, washing machine, refrigerator and black and white television. These were life-changing technologies.  As I write the list, I try imagining what life would be like without them. I take for granted that they have always been around.  And yet, in my life as a teacher I can remember teaching before photocopiers, computers, email, and the internet.

            So this brings me to your generation of new technologies. Wow, Facebook, Twitter, myspace, youtube, ning, ipod, jing, wikipedia. Can you imagine living in an era where the main source of information was books in a library? Can you imagine doing all of your writing with pen and paper? You are children of the cyberage. Computers and the internet come natural to you. But these technologies will also change and become obsolete like my typewriter and Sony Walkman. It's beyond my ability to even fathom what might happen in your lifetimes.

            Back to my colossal ugh and how this affects all of us. When I was a student, the teacher was supposed to be this great fountain of information from which the students drank in knowledge. I'm not sure that was really true back then, but it certainly isn't the way education works today. It is a two-way street—we learn from each other. I'm not sure exactly where this blogging road is going to take us, but I am confident that we are going to learn a great deal from each other along the way.