I am actually meant to be leading my last cohort session right now, but as an English teacher I felt it best to give us a chance to decompress, relax, and chill out. Do some writing, reflect, and share some ideas. As always, after (during) a conference my mind is rife with ideas and possibilities. Tidbits of wisdom, swirl in my head, competing with debris, junk and broken thoughts. It’s a mess in my head and this has me jazzed.

The problem with this sort of mental cacophony is that it is difficult to articulate any kind of coherent piece of writing. Instead, as I often choose to do I want to grab the debris and the wisdom and see what we can make.

We tell stories as a way to understand the human condition. There are many ways to tell a story and technology allows us different mediums that help us find unique and authentic audiences for the stories we tell. The technological tools help us create in new, mobile, and media rich ways, while the connected, networked nature of our digital lives connect those stories in ways unimaginable in the past. We tell stories as a way to understand the human condition.

I see many of the tools discussed, Google Apps, Blogs, Social Networks like the bed of a garden. We till and tend the soil to create a rich and fertile place for ideas to flower and fruit, but these tools are not the rewards themselves. It is important to teach students and teachers how to create an environment (a garden bed) that allows their ideas to take root and grow. The skills necessary to do this are not complex, just as hoeing and planting are not complex. The difficult part should be, the understanding of how to tend what is plant. We must not spend so much energy on the soil (tools) but the actual act of gardening. (Learning)

Kids do no have enough many physical spaces designed for them to handout. Children have playgrounds and parks, adults have the rest, but where are teen agers meant to hang-out and socialize with out adult supervision? This is an idea that Alec shared. Because they do not have these physical spaces, they gravitate to cyberspace and online socialized spaced. We want young people to understand the need for balance, and the importance of unplugged life, we might want to consider building places for them to be together.