The Blogging Experience

Last Thursday I had to speak in front of about 40 people about the afterschool program I am currently participating in. I'm standing in front of my laptop that is projected on a large screen, pointing out the various projects we are accomplishing in our afterschool. I'm just rambling on and on. Then the moderator asks, "Could you explain what the term blogging means?"

So in that split second from her asking that question to my response, my mind is racing and turning gears from an audience that is familiar with blogging to an audience that is unfamiliar. Wow. It took me by surprise; although, I know that it shouldn't have surprised me. After all, I'm pretty new at this too.

The first time I blogged was last August in the Globaloria workshop. But then again, when Globaloria introduced it to me, I felt it was one of those tools that the world was already involved in, and I needed to get up to speed. In my Globaloria audience, I feel I'm often running to catch up just to keep up (blogging, learning Flash, wiki-ing). I am a learner in Globaloria; every day is a new application to learn and apply. But in another audience (as I found), I was a leader in this new application. Being a person of knowledge about blogging (at that very moment) stunned me.

So, being a bit of a perfectionist at heart, as well as a life-long learner, I decided to tackle the world of blogging, understand it to the best of my ability, and be prepared if I was ever asked again in front of an audience, "What is blogging?" At 7:00 a.m. on this Sunday morning, armed with my Google site, I sat exploring blogging. I explored by searching blogs from every subject that came to mind. I learned about peoples' opinions on movie reviews to companies' stand on political issues.

Then I turned to education. I clicked into Fred's blog titled Hacking Education. He intrigued me because he talks about "we need to completely reinvent the way we educate ..." Then he started talking about games in education, and I immediately thought about Globaloria. He writes: "In fact, I think games can play a big role in a new better form of education. The first time I really thought about this was when I read my friend Steven Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good For You. Steven points out that game play is teaching our children skills they could never get in school. Another friend, Bing Gordon, formerly Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts, points out that math geeks, economists, and statisticians used to get their first taste of math as kids reading baseball cards, they now get it playing Madden Football. And the amount of math they can get to is at least an order of magnitude more challenging." I'm thinking: if math geeks, economists, and statisticians got their first taste of math reading baseball cards, can you imagine what our Globaloria students will rise to accomplish.

As I've written before, I'm often grateful to Globaloria for challenging me personally and professionally. But today, in reading Fred's blog, he has reminded me that Globaloria is lifting our students to a much higher level of learning than we could ever imagine. They are not just playing the games, but they are creating the games! I think our 14 year-olds in the Globaloria classroom would blow Fred away! We're not just talking about it. We are living, breathing, and providing our students 21st century learning in our Globaloria classroom.