More think:lab

Don't you love it when you discover a blog in your field that you've never seen before and then it proceeds to blow your mind over and over in the next week? So you go back and read nearly every post the author has ever written? That's what happened with me and think:lab. In Imagine: Blogging for People Who Do Not Read, he skewers some of the pointless debates in education and returns the conversation to Stuff That Matters. It's not specifically about blogging, although the title reminded me that my four-year-old already adores blogging and sees it as a communication medium. No, this is more than that:

"Learning without passion is not learning. They make velcro-closure sneakers and spell check for all the rest. Or they simply outsource it (skill, knowledge, 'fact') to India or via TurboTax. Period. Without something profound pushing your soul, without a journey, without a Bilbo returning the ring, without a blind turn in the woods, without finding your absolute best self facing the blind trust fall of adventure, there is no learning worth fighting for that should divide communities based on bond increases or place technologists against administrators within the professional debate hamster-wheel or incite home schoolers to mock public schoolers (vice versa) or to ask anyone to worry about 21st century skills (and the tests that will get you there)."

All of this revolutionary talk had me pondering Brian's Enquiring Minds as well -- he's always thinking about these issues in similar incendiary ways, and he's already wondering how we'll make sure that the good ideas we implement soon will actually last:

"I believe that projects like Enquiring Minds are very worthwhile and needed in education. But after you have created and implemented a few of them yourself, you come to realize that in spite of the efforts of people to promote change, the education system itself does not evolve as a result. Why is this? It certainly does not mean we should stop trying. We ask students to take responsibility for learning, but are the systems we create responsible?"