Week 1 -- leader or follower or something else?

Do you consider yourself a leader or follower in this realm, or something else altogether? Why?

Short answer: something else altogether.

Since my prior experiences are limited, I do not consider myself a leader here. But generally speaking, I am not a follower. I am more of a trailblazer. I do not feel constrained by convention and generally see possibilities and implications where others see potential to extend the status quo.

As a novice, I must learn the tools of the medium in order to exploit full application. So, first and foremost, I am a learner. In the context of learning, I am an adventurer.

My background has consistently challenged the status quo. I am excited about the potential of web 2.o applications for learning -- in the context of 19th century educator Charlotte Mason's twaddle-free learning; early 20th century educator Eduard Lindeman's vision of education liberated from the from stifling ritual, formalism and institutionalism and revivified as an adventurous exercise in intelligence, power, self-expression, freedom, creativity, appreciation, enjoyment and fellowship; mid-to-late 20th century reformers John Holt, Ivan Illich, and John Taylor Gatto who sought to encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, and capacities for insight -by encouraging autonomy and access to educational objects, skill exchanges, peer matching, and experts-at-large in the context of authentic tasks -- real work, real charity, real adventures.

There is no faculty within the soul which can be spared in the great work of education; but then every faculty, or rather power, works to the one end if we make the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake the object of our educational efforts (Mason, 1896, Volume 6, p. 93).

Evolving personalities follow the path of learning in an attempt to adjust themselves to a world in which knowledge leads to power, power leads to self-expression, freedom and creativity, creative freedom leads to enjoyable experience … These qualities which are enhanced by intellectual effort become meaningful only when seen in social contexts. Intelligence, like freedom, is relative, not merely to ignorance or to bondage, but also to intelligence and freedom in other human beings. Education proceeds by means of communication, and all forms of communication are social products (Lindeman, 1926, p. 94).

My perspective of Web 2.0 is that vision has met opportunity.

next post to address what do I hope to get out of this class
PREVIEW: tools, practice, experience, a glimpse of a world of opportunity