A Promise To Myself

I started writing this blog over a year ago. The initial reason I choose to become a blogger, and not just remain a reader of blogs, was through the influence of people like Will Richardson and David Warlick. They are educators, advisors, bloggers, writers, presenters and many more things as well. They made me realise the necessity of learning to talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to new Internet technologies, Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it.

Here are four quotes, when put together, clarify my motivation to blog, create podcasts, make collages, do IMing, place comments, and Sype my way through the present day Internet.

David Warlick (2 Cents Worth)

“... certainly our children are natives and we (teachers and parents) are immigrants to the technical world.”

“Most of the kids in our classrooms today have absolutely no conscious recollection of the 20th century: the century that raised us (the teachers). For many of them the only connection that they have with the previous, the last century, is happening in their classroom. That’s where they’re supposed to be learning about their future!”

Will Richardson (Weblogg-ed)

“We teach teachers to teach, we don’t teach teachers to learn. Even in professional development, we teach them stuff they need to be better teachers, but do we give them the skills they need to be better learners?”

Ken Robinson (TED Talks 2006)

“… we must see our creative capacities for the richness they are, and see our children for the hope that they are.”

Kevin Kelly (TED Talks 2005)

“You can delay technology but you can’t kill it.”

As a parent of two children, I need to know they’ll receive proper supervision and guidance in the uses of digital media. Unfortunately, their education system does not think it is part of their responsibility as educators to help the children learn how to use this media creatively or constructively or, even, responsibly. So, as with other aspects of their upbringing, in part to compensate for the lacking of foresight of the education system, I set out on a journey a year or so ago to learn how to walk the walk of Web 2.0, as it were.

It was a very tentative start; I produced a few sound seeing tours for family and friends, created this blog and motivated some women friends to set up the Red Tent Blog. All of this was done, more or less, in semi-privacy (i.e. only friends and family knew the blog address). This is because I was shy, sceptical, and distinctly lacking in confidence; I didn’t think I could ever produce something of interests to others.

Participating in NaBloPoMo has sort of been a coming out of the closet for me as a blogger. I didn’t realise until now that there are complete strangers (still; who knows maybe that will change) out there interested enough in what I write to comment on the content. That is rather thrilling, isn’t it?

Since NaBloPoMo is over soon, I thought that I’d publicly state a promise I made to myself yesterday. This promise came to mind after attending an interesting seminar at our research institute on the psychology of Web 2.0 social networks. In particular, after reading this quote on one of the presentation transparencies:

A. Dix (source info later)

“Many people assume that because they can make information available on the web, they should. Unfortunately, because it is very easy to publish information, much less care is taken with the actual content.”

So, my promise to myself is, to pay an equal amount of attention to producing good and interesting content as I do to fiddling with all the new and free web gadgets.