Kelly Christopherson has put out an invitation to join a book club. For those of you who have not visited Kelly yet, his blog Educational Discourse is a blog from the trenches. He is a Principal who also teaches and coaches. Kelly’s blog posts are not only thoughtful and insightful, they are written with a personal touch… they have heart.

Dan Pink‘s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

Kelly has suggested a wiki or a forum, or skype as examples of places we can meet and ‘chat’… who knows we could even meet in Second Life. These are only suggestions, we invite other ideas. The simple goal of this Book Club is to create a space where participants can get together and have a meaningful, enjoyable learning conversation.

As an example of how a Book Club can enrich the reading experience, A Whole New Mind introduces Six Senses, each with a working Portfolio. These portfolios all have website links to follow… wouldn’t it be great if 6 (or more) people each collected the links from just one chapter, explored them, and provided them on a wiki with comments as to what they thought about the sites they visited? I’d be far more likely to interact with others contributing this way, than to go to all these links on my own.

Let one of us know if you are interested.

A few years ago, a friend sent me an invitation to join him on a social network and start something called a blog. I signed up and my first post, “The purpose of a system is what is does” set the metaphoric tone for my ideas and thoughts that will fill this space. Essentially, I think many students are square pegs that we try to put into round holes (my personal schooling experience included). I think we have a lot still to learn about education and learning, and I also think that technology might provide some bridges to help make effective pedagogy come faster, and easier.

With this in mind I now move ‘pair-a-dimes’ to it’s new and final home. It started at elgg.net which was confusing to some since elgg is an open source software platform as well as an open source blogging platform. So the name was changed to Eduspaces.net. Now Eduspaces will be managed by Taking it Global – and we were told the address would change again. Today I checked to confirm the new address and low-and-behold, Eduspaces is being kept in tact… too little, too late to keep me there! On the bright side, my old links will stay live.

So here I am, making the move out on my own. I am using a WordPress publishing platform hosted by BlueHost. I’ve had some issues with transferring my blog and so now I will move my blog post-by-post over to this site. I’m taking advantage of this ‘problem’ by reading, reflecting, (and fixing old links) as I go.

Once again, I bring you my thoughts and reflections on education, technology & learning. I invite you to join in the conversation and add your ‘couple of dimes worth’. Or, challenge yourself to use technology in a transformative way in your classroom. Or, ask yourself why we are stuck in a paradigm that suggests changes to education need to be slow and progressive? Be part of the conversation, be part of the solution, be an active learner who shares ideas with others. Do so, and I thank you for contributing to my learning!

Dave.

Think Good Thoughts,
Say Good Words,
Do Good Deeds.