When I was growing up “Get Smart” was a popular show with my family and friends. The question “Would you believe . . .?” was often asked humorously, in Max-style, starting off with an exaggerated and unbelievable suggestion, then moving through a series of diminishing magnitude to the, often insignificant, reality.
I am not going to start with an exaggeration for I am rather pleased with what I have achieved. I wish to make no comparison with anyone else who may have achieved a whole lot more, or even those who may have done less. I just know that I have learned a lot, and in fact, have learned so much that I now know what future learning I need to do.
If you know nothing, you don’t know what you need to know. It is only when you know something that you get an inkling of what there is to learn.
If, this time last year, you had said to me:
“One year from now you will be writing a blog and publishing your fiftieth blog post; you will have over 800 followers on Twitter and you will engage in conversations with people from all over the world.”
I would have laughed and said you were crazy. I had no thought of writing a blog and thought Twitter was just for twits.
I had followed only one or two blogs posted by family and friends on holidays so knew nothing of the pleasure or potential of writing or following blogs.
What I “knew” of Twitter was minimal and misinformed. I thought it was people sending messages about eating breakfast, going to the bathroom and other mundane events. I couldn’t see the point in that.
How wrong were my misconceptions how they have changed!
How Ihave changed.
What I would have considered a Max-style exaggeration a year ago is now a reality. And it didn’t take a year. It has all happened in just six months.
Six months ago I published my first blog post and tweeted for the first time.
I was both nervous and excited and had no expectations other than to see what would happen.
I am delighted with the result: the learning I have done, the people I have met and the way my writing has grown. One of the greatest pleasures is having control over what I write; another is meeting so many interesting people, some like-minded and others with differing views, but all supportive and willing to share their knowledge, ideas and thoughts.
In late 2012 I did a couple of sessions about digital publishing with Simon Groth (Manager of if:book Australia), and another at the beginning of 2013. While the talks were fascinating and I learned a lot, I was such a N00b that it was all still a forest to me and I couldn’t see the path to take me in and didn’t have the tools to clear a path. I needed more time to absorb the information I had heard and work out what to do with it. I still wasn’t convinced that blogging and social media were for me.
Belinda Pollard of Small Blue Dog Publishing changed all that at another QWC session in June. I am very grateful to her for convincing me that this was the way to go and that I just needed to get started. She described Twitter as the “water cooler for writers” and a great way to meet other writers.
Less than two months after hearing Belinda speak I was on my way, hacking a path through the undergrowth, searching for the warmth of sunlight through the canopy. My quest for information started with her website and crawled its way out and around other websites and blogs, some of which I return to often for reassurance, reminders and more information.
Now in answer to the question, “Are you experienced?” I can reply with a very definitive: ”Yes, I am experienced!”
I have lost my nervousness, but not my excitement. I have grown in confidence and knowledge but know that there is so much more to learn. In my Twitter profile I say that I was born too soon, but maybe I just started late. Considering that there were no computers and no internet for more than half my life and the only “mobile” phone I knew in my younger days was Maxwell Smart’s shoe, I think I’m doing okay in the catch-up.
In addition to all the generous bloggers and twitter users who have helped me along the way, many without knowing it, I am also very grateful to you, my readers and followers, who have visited, commented, liked, favourited and otherwise shared my posts and tweets, but more especially your knowledge, support and ideas. While I had no expectation that any of you would drop by to read or engage me in conversation, I’m so glad you did. Thank you. Please stay with me as my journey continues.
When I first stepped, rather tentatively, into the world of blogging and tweeting I had no idea of the pleasures I would find. I found a whole community of others who share my passion for education, learning, literacy and writing. I found a comfortable niche, discussion group, and a place for sharing ideas like I hadn’t for a long time. I’ve “come home” on the internet.
In these few short months I have come across some bloggers with very powerful messages that I wish everyone could read and act upon in the ways described. What a wonderful world we would have!
Over the coming months I will let you know about some articles I consider ‘must reads’.
Please let me know of others you think I should also be reading!
Thanks for sharing and supporting me on my learning journey thus far.
The story has just begun!
This first in the series is a lecture given by Neil Gaiman entitled “Reading and obligation”
“It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased.”
If you have read any other articles on my blog, you will know that I am biased; biased towards a child-centered, hands-on, creative and innovative approach to education. I believe that children are capable of far more than a structured didactic approach to schooling gives them credit for; and that big changes in the way education is delivered are necessary if we are to make best use of our most valuable resource – human potential.
As a reader, writer and literacy educator I am biased towards approaches which foster a love of reading and writing. The pleasures to be gained from a literate existence are immeasurable. But more than that, being literate is not only personally empowering, it is a basic human right.
Obviously the articles on my must read list will be those that share my biases.
Please follow the link to watch the video or read the complete transcript of Neil’s lecture.
I offer a few teasers below to incite your interest.
“everything changes when we read”
Wow! How powerful is that statement!
“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy giving them access to those books and letting them read them.”
“Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it’s a gateway drug to reading. . .
And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy.”
“Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.”
Don’t you love that last statement? I do. If we are always “happy” with the way things are, why would we ever try to improve or change them? A little discontent can be a good thing!
“We need to read and write, we need global citizens who can read comfortably, comprehend what they are reading, understand nuance, and make themselves understood.”
Neil goes on to talk about our obligations as readers, writers and citizens of the world.
He lists the following (read or listen for his explanation)
Read for pleasure
Support libraries
Read aloud to our children
To use the language
We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it’s the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth (underlining is mine)
not to bore our readers
not to preach, not to lecture, not to force
never, ever, under any circumstances, to write anything for children to read that we would not want to read ourselves.
to understand and to acknowledge that as writers for children we are doing important work,
to daydream We have an obligation to imagine. . . . individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.
to make things beautiful.
to tell our politicians what we want
Neil reminds us that
“Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise.
“If you want your children to be intelligent,” he said, “read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.“
I couldn’t agree more.
What about you? What do you think of Neil’s list of obligations? Are there any you would omit, or any you would add?
One of my favourite talks about education is a TED talk given by Ken Robinson in 2006 “How schools kill creativity”.
His contention is that
“creativity . . . is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
Although the video has had more than 21 million views (while quite a few of them mine, nowhere near that number!) and drawn over 3 000 comments during the last 8 years, his views need to reach a wider audience still; an audience with the power to enact change.
One thing I had always loved about teaching was the opportunity to express myself creatively, and to encourage my students to do the same. Unfortunately the current emphasis on a content-driven, top-down approach where test results reign supreme has left little room for anyone’s creativity. I am not saying there was ever much opportunity for creativity in formal schooling, but creative teachers could always squeeze a bit it. Now the opportunities for creative “massage” are few.
My optimism for positive change in education is always raised when I read or hear of others who share similar views. I think if enough voices are heard chanting the same message that a change may come.
This post (and article in Saturday’s QWeekend magazine) by Mary-Rose Maccoll “Why Banff means the World” also proclaims the vision of Ken Robinson. Mary-Rose is another fan.
She says that
“Being at the Banff Centre (in Canada) has made me reflect on what we lose when we don’t foster art, when we don’t foster creativity. And what we lose is the world.”
She says that
“even as school education becomes increasingly narrow in its focus, we’re also seeing a decline in performance on the very outcomes that standardisation seeks to improve.”
She concludes by saying,
“As I sit in my room and watch the mountains, listening to the trail of a contraband sax down the hall (you’re supposed to play in the soundproofed studios in the forest), reading a piece by a Scottish writer, I am grateful for artists. In our 21st century world, we surely need them.”
I agree wholeheartedly as, I’m sure would Ken Robinson, along with Teachling whose post What is Education, anyway?Pt 1 I reblog for you here.
I agree with Teachling’s belief that
“many teachers would feel that – as well as their students’ innate talents and creativity being snuffed – their own talents and creativity don’t get much of a look-in. I believe most teachers are very restricted in terms of what they teach as well as how they teach it.”
I also agree with her when she states that
“that there’s very little teachers can do about it.
It’s the administrators and politicians that should take Robinson’s advice. It’s also the perceptions of a majority of parents that would need to vastly change if any rethinking of fundamental principles were to occur.”
Have a listen to Ken and read these other posts, then let me know what you think.
How can we make our voices be heard to ensure that creativity and innovation is not lost for the future?
Ken Robinson’s take on schools, and how they kill creativity…
You’re likely one of the 20,738,467 viewers of Ken Robinson’s “Schools Kill Creativity” 2006 TED Talk. Robinson’s assertion, and general gist of the talk, is that “all kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them; pretty ruthlessly”. The “we”, we can infer from the rest of his talk, are schools.
Let me pick out some key points:
• “My contention is that creativity, now, is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
• “We are educating people out of their creative capacities.” • “Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects… At the top are Mathematics and Languages, then the Humanities and at the bottom are the Arts… And in pretty much every education system there’s a hierarchy within the Arts. Art and Music are normally given a higher…
Norah Colvin 