Blogging As Energy Efficient Education

In the old days of teaching, a teacher gave an assignment, the student did it, brought it back and turned it in (no posting on line) and the teacher read it, graded it and gave it back. The End. The focus was on the teacher - what the teacher wanted, what the teacher thought important - and in the end the only person besides the student who read it was the teacher. Grade given. Education bestowed. Is this an energy efficient way to do education? I posit that if a student is going to go to all the trouble to do the work, shouldn't more benefit? Shouldn't there be a ripple effect? Shouldn't we make use of each individual's energy in more efficient and far reaching ways? The new code in education has arrived.

I am loving the freedoms and openness that the Internet and online learning has brought to education. This blog is a case in point. Students decided what they wanted to blog about given that they were taking a course on Ecological Citizenship. They engaged in deciding the statement they wanted to put on the blog site; they set up the schedule and outlined for themselves what they wanted the blog to consist of. Me, the teacher, had only to invite the learning, allow it to be a major part of the course this semester, and participate with the students in exploring the topics they agreed to examine and experiment with in their lives. I got to join them in the exploration. I was mindful that if I witnessed that they weren't putting the effort into their work, it was my job to remind them and find out what the barriers were to doing more engaged learning. In the process hopefully coming up with new strategies to help.

In this way education becomes a very transparent process. Not only am I, the teacher, allowing a different kind of learning to emerge, I am also learning myself. I was excited week after week by the quality of the blog stories that outlined the experiments with their lifestyle changes. I posted mine which paled in comparison. And the public got to witness them as well - as they were posted to facebook and list serve groups. So different than one teacher reading a student's work and one teacher determining whether this student was showing growth and learning. Energy wasted. In this process on the other hand, many got educated as well the professor and the students amongst themselves. They were teachers to each other. I don't know about you, but this sounds alot more fun and certainly more educational.

At every level of education, we need to make our learning real and relevant to making our world a better place to live for all. Blogging is such a great educational opportunity. And in keeping with our Ecological Citizenship course, I believe it was quite energy efficient. YES!