I like to think of myself as a writer. Or, at the very least, a person who, when called upon to write, can produce something coherent and interesting.
Additionally, I like to think of myself as an efficient machine: I do not let procrastination win. No–I work all hours of the day and night, squeezing in email sessions while my kids play in the sandbox in order to permanently hover around inbox 0. I scribble on napkins; I compose in the shower.
Yet here I find myself, emails piling up, words unwritten, blank screens and an evil cursor blinking, blinking, blinking….
Sometimes, writing is painful.
In my last post, I welcomed everyone to my learning, and today I seem to be inviting everyone to my hideous writer’s block.
In other news, the semester started and I am currently enrolled in “Technology, Society and Culture,” taught by the brilliant Yong Zhao. He is the author of one of my favorite books on education reform, Catching Up or Leading the Way, and I feel very privileged to be taught by him in his last semester here at Michigan State. For our first assignment, we’ve been asked to read the following and write about them:
- Paul R. Ehrlich (2002). Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect. New York: Penguin Group.
- Jared Diamond (1999). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton.
- Larry Cuban (2001). Oversold and Underused: Computers in Classrooms, 1980-2000. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, Michael B. Horn (2008). Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw Hill.
I am not quite through all of the texts, but as I complete them, I plan to blog about them here. The final essay/s will also appear in this space as part of my open education journey.
