Reading, Writing and Relevancy
Communication, education, literature, technology and culture
Friday, June 11, 2010
On to new adventures
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Trust and student teaching
Friday, July 24, 2009
Firing up the blog again
To mark this milestone, the blog name changeth once again. I'm still not happy with it, but at least it states my purpose in entering this profession. That purpose is simply to have a purpose. In other words, I want everything my students and I do in the classroom to be relevant - and for each of us to be able to articulate why it's relevant.
This is not as easy as it looks.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Desire Paths
I would like to share a quote with you from Andrew Douch's blog.
"A 'desire path' is an unplanned path worn into being by people leaving the path provided by a landscape designer. There is a principle in landscape design that some people call ‘paving the desire path’. Instead of planning and laying paths and then expecting people to follow them, you watch people, to see where they actually go, and then pave those paths. Paved desire paths will be more successful - because you are simply making it easier for people to do what they want to do anyway."
Douchy uses this image as a metaphor for deciding which technology tools to use in the classroom.
For me, the metaphor extends to my feelings about technology in the classroom - and my philosophy of education in general. I hear so many teachers complain about how tired they are of nagging students to put away cell phones and i-pods and to stop sneaking off to myspace.
Why not yield to their intuition - and connect their interests to what we are trying to teach?
Why not follow their path and see where it goes?