So what is the real “why” of your course? Why should students take it? How will they be changed by it? What is your discipline’s real “why”? Why does it matter that students take __________ courses or become _________ists? How can digital and networked technologies effectively support the real why of your course?
I struggle with the ideas of courses and school in general but here is what I hope for my children and the people I interact with at any time.
I hope to both arm people against misfortune/abuse/boredom and provision them for additional opportunities amazement, wonder, and happiness (and the ability to inspire those feelings in others). I don’t know what -ist these people might be. The -ist doesn’t fit for me. Maybe passionate intellectual omnivores? Reflective Renaissance figures? Happy ambidextrous wanderers? Magical weavers of detritus and wonder?
I hope to get people to realize their own power and capabilities, to pursue their own interests and connections. I hope to point out options that enable you not to simply take what’s given but to build what you want. That applies to what you might make, how you might make it, and the community within which you might make it. That fits pretty well in the digital spaaaaaace. It’s big. It’s open. It’s malleable. It’s full of wonderful things and people interested in just about anything you could want and it gets easier and easier to make more and more powerful things.
Love this: “It’s big. It’s open. It’s malleable. It’s full of wonderful things and people interested in just about anything you could want and it gets easier and easier to make more and more powerful things.”