What an amazing time it is to be a teacher. We are in an era of transition from the old method of delivering education for the generation of the industrial era to the new global, tech-savvy generation.
“ The biggest obstacle to school change is our memories” -Dr. Allen Glenn
What I got from Dr. Allen Glenn’s quote on the Project Based Learning PowerPoint is that we continue to do the business of education using content and methodology that does not work for today's students. I am reminded of a discussion that I had years ago in a college class regarding how action in the present rarely keeps up with technological advances. A great example is the years it took to come up with the attached garage. For years the family car was stored in the carriage house next to the horses. It was not until the 50’s when people got sick of walking down to the outbuilding (and having the car smell like horses!) that the attached garage came into use. The class where this discussion took place was studying Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage. He was considered the futurist and guru commenter on electronic media at the time. The upshot is that it takes many years for people to let go of the traditional to embrace the experimental and move on.
When I did a Google search to reacquaint myself with McLuhan I located information in a 1995 hypertext essay titled Media Determinism in Cyberspace by Samuel Ebersole http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/rojc/mdic/mcluhan.html
Ebersole writes that McLuhan proposed the advent of the printing press had a negative impact on social history. He maintained it caused alienation because the social norm of story tellers and listening groups moved to reading as a solitary activity. McLuhan did not live to see it, but the Internet, in a strange way has brought literacy back to a group activity.
"I link therefore I am" - From Hypertextual Consciousness - Mark Amerika
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