Technology-ish

I think that 21st Century education is a constant balancing act between defining our learning goals and finding/acquiring/using the tools we need to meet those goals. Vicki Davis had a great blog post about Webkinz and education this week.

I also attended Peter Reynold's webinar on Tuesday and he reminded us to always try to promote creativity and innovation in our students. He had us draw teacups, so at my technology team meeting I had the staff draw monkeys. Most, including mine, were "monkey-ish." If you didn't hear the webinar, the "ish" might not make sense for you but basically what Peter was saying is that "ish" is a way of encouraging students. To that end he has created a product to easily allow students to animate drawn objects.

This product will do well to help us target ISTE's technology standard of creativity and innovation. Some of the first graders in one of my elementary schools got to demo this tool and created some Animation-ish movies today to illustrate dancing. I hope you enjoy them and all remember to dance to your own music! (hmmm...video upload errors...for now will publish without the videos...sorry!).

Many of us strive to be on the cutting edge every day. In balancing life, I have to say I think sometimes it's ok NOT to be and sometimes it's ok if you are just "technology-ish."