“I Don’t Need Your Network…” Revisiting 2009
Now that I finally have all of my 3,700 lifetime blog posts on one site, from time to time I want to look back on some of the ones that drew the most commentary/discussion, or ones that I just think are interesting to reflect on.
In December of 2009, I wrote a post titled I Don’t Need Your Network (or Your Computer, or Your Tech Plan, or Your…), and over a couple of weeks, it attracted 152 comments. And let me just say, the comment thread is better than the post itself. (Seriously, if you have the time…)
So what’s changed in the 6.5 years since that post went live?
Short answer: Not as much as I think I expected. I mean, aren’t we still pretty much asking these questions?
- If at some point in the fairly near future just about every high school kid is going to have a device that connects to the Internet, how much longer can we ask them to stuff it in their lockers at the beginning of the day?
- How are we going to have to rethink the idea that we have to provide our kids a connection? Can we even somewhat get our brains around the idea of letting them use their own?
- At what point do we get out of the business of troubleshooting and fixing technology? Isn’t “fixing your own stuff” a 21st Century skill?
- How are we helping our teachers understand the potentials of phones and all of these shifts in general?
The ubiquity of phone access, even for kids who come from the lower end of the economic spectrum, has arrived. In developing countries, smart phones are becoming essential tools for learning, education, business, community and almost everything else. By the end of this decade, 5 billion people in the world will own a smartphone. Does that in-our-pocket access serve as an important context for the decisions we make in our schools and classrooms?
Let me just say (once again) that I’m struck by the level of respect and civility in what at times becomes a fairly heated discussion that takes many different directions and offers many different examples on both sides of the debate. That’s getting harder to find.
And on a personal note, I think this post comes from the period when I was at my pinnacle as a blogger. The Twitter effect was just about to take root. I was starting to blog less and Tweet more, a trend that I’ve been trying to reverse in the last few months. Either way, it’s definitely interesting having an archive to look back on.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Originally published at Will Richardson.com.
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