A while back, Stephen remarked in a podcast (made during or shortly after his hiatus) to the effect that it's not about the learning, it's about the life... Well, that wasn't quite how he said it, but that was my take on it. While he and I differ widely on the purpose of that life, I agree with the principle.
Yesterday, I took the day off work. I went to London to spend the day with someone I hadn't seen since she was a baby 22 years ago. I switched off my phone, and focused on the person in front of me. As I commented on one of David Warlick's posts, nothing takes the place of people - real people with skin on.
We chatted all day - fascinated by what had happened in one another's lives in the intervening 22 years, finding points of convergence and divergence. It was a learning experience of a different sort. I came away having experienced a profound healing. A missing piece of my life's jigsaw had slotted quietly into place. No amount of life online could ever achieve that.
Interestly enough - and perhaps of more relevance to this blog - the young lady in question is an English teacher in Australia. We got onto the subject of blogs and she mentioned, as if it were a given, that she she uses blogs in her teaching. I was tickled by this for many reasons, one of which is that so few of the registered edubloggers are Australian, that one might be forgiven for thinking that the technology is going unnoticed there. It seems this is not the case. If her view is anything to go by, the language teachers there are leading the way in the use of social media in education as much as anywhere else. It would be good to hear more noise from them, though!
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
It's about life...
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1 comment:
This is nice to hear, both your own story, and that there are many edubloggers in Austrealia. -- Stephen
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