Hey, Bert!

Sesame Street has to be one of those under-rated radically defining pieces of cultural change. Check out Bert and Ernie on using one's imagination.

Wesch lecture

Michael Wesch, the cultural anthropologist from Kansas State University who produced "The Machine is Us[ing Us]" and an hour-long (approx) YouTube video on his students' research on YouTube ("on" in multiple senses) unpacks the former in a lecture at the University of Manitoba recorded last June. This is a perfect introduction to what I'm trying to look at theologically.
Here's his class Netvibes page.

A profitable day

Our Distance Learning staff joined Moose Jaw teachers and administrators and guests from both Alberta and Manitoba for a day with Ewan McIntosh yesterday. Thanks to Dean Shareski for putting the day together. It was very valuable for us, and the debriefing session at our staff meeting this afternoon is just the start of what I am sure will be lots of innovation and creative ideas to come in the way we help our students learn (and learn from them).
One thing Ewan said and I'm still processing is that (can't remember who he was quoting) we can't get creative with a tool until its use is so familiar to us as to seem boring. I'm not by any means on the cutting edge of ed-tech tool use, but I have to remember that things now "old hat" to me are still new to many. Thanks to a good, full day in Moose Jaw, our staff is now much more familiar than before with what's available and how it might be put to use. Now we have some introductions to make for others in the institution . . .