Shareski's Ideas and Thoughts

One of our "tech tasks" in our Internet for Educators class involves finding an established edublogger (meaning someone in the education world that blogs), follow them, and then blog about why we have decided to follow the blog and some observations we have made along the way. After watching and blogging about the video "Teaching: The Moral Imperative" produced by Dean Shareski, a Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, SK, I decided to follow his blog entitled Ideas and Thoughts (http://ideasandthoughts.org/).

Shareski is a deep and innovative thinker when it comes to the world of educating today's kids. He sees the big picture, while at the same time he accepts the realities of the real world. For example, he wonders out loud (or in digital writing is more accurate) if all student learning has to be explicitly tied to learning outcomes. Perhaps teachers should get students to be creative and create something that brings them joy (he is specifically talking about a lip-synced video in his blog) that may not be totally curriculum based. The thing I love about his blog, as it is in this case, is he "wonders out loud". This means the comments (many coming from other education professionals) are just as important as the blog post itself. Instead of pushing his views, he brings forth innovative and creative thinking, and allows others to comment. I believe that through dialogue regarding education issues happening right now in the classroom, education reform will continue to move forward and students will benefit. My hope is that when I have my own classroom, I can open up my thoughts, issues, and experiences to the world in the same way and learn along with the rest of the education world, as Shareski is doing.

On the lighter side, I like this blog because of Shareski's sense of humour. See his post on Why parents should have Facebook accounts.