Information Overload

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google summed up our new world perfectly  last week:

We create as much information in two days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003.

I, too, like everyone in this day and age, am overloaded with information. It is the start of a new school year with a new job description… an exciting prospect, but nevertheless, lots of new information for me and from me needs to be out there.

How do you cope with all the information that is out there, that you must learn or know about, and that you must disseminate to others?

Let me know.

Image from  http://www.pamil-visions.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/information-overload-cartoon.jpg

Technorati Tags: information,overload,education,school

SCHOOL vs LEARNING

I am Re-Quoting (is that a verb?) from Scott McLeod’s post at Dangerously Irrelevant because I have to agree wholeheartedly. Scott says…

“Seth Godin is one of my favorite thinkers. I’ve learned a ton from him. Here are a couple of quotes from his post today on education.”

“School was the big thing for a long time. School is tests and credits and notetaking and meeting standards. Learning, on the other hand, is 'getting it'. It's the conceptual breakthrough that permits the student to understand it then move on to something else. Learning doesn't care about workbooks or long checklists.

For a while, smart people thought that school was organized to encourage learning. For a long time, though, people in the know have realized that they are fundamentally different activities.”

(I am not sure if I have all of the quote marks in the right places, but I am trying to give credit where credit is due!)

Seth also says there are 4 descriptions of schooling today: FREE, ABUNDANT, SCARCE and EXPENSIVE.

“If I were going to wager, I'd say that the free, abundant learning combination is the one that's going to change the world.”

If Seth is right, then what are we doing in schools today to capitalize (not in the money way) on that fact?

Whom are we teaching? 

What are we teaching?

When are we teaching? 

Where are we teaching?

Why are we teaching?

How are we teaching?

[As always, in my author quotes, the underlines, color changes, and bold type is mine, not the author’s.  I do this so often, I should probably put a disclaimer to this effect at the bottom of every blog!]

Technorati Tags: Seth Godin,Scott McLeod,learning,education,schooling,abundant,free,scarce,expensive,school

WHERE have you BEEN?

I just want to say, SORRY!

I started substitute teaching and ended up with a position as the Technology Lab Assistant. This took up a great deal of time and I was not able to post. Now school is out and after a wonderful vacation in Nantucket, MA, I am back to reading blogs and hopefully writing more blogs.

The cartoon and the "story" If you Give a Teacher a Mouse.. just posted are results of slowly becoming caught up with reading all my blogs.

I think they are both fun and true!

I subscribe to over 125 blogs in my Google Reader. When you go absent for a while, it takes quite some time to get caught up. There is always something new waiting to be told, learned, read, or digested.

Soon I will be back to substituting in the Year Round Schools in our district.

Hopefully, a full time regular teaching position will be "just around the corner."