The Fischbowl is updated so frequently that sometimes it is hard for me to keep up. (Karl you are single handedly changing education.) I finally got around to watching the Water Buffalo film and reading all of the comments. I also surfed around and got caught up on some of the other blogs and comments out there and I always feel like I have so much to learn as an educator.
I watch CNN and Fox New and constantly see kids who came up with a million dollar idea and used the internet to market it and are rich by age 10. So who am I to think that I can teach them things that they can't learn somewhere else?
Even my 3 year old daughter is constantly amazing me at the inferences she makes with concepts that I know have never formally been taught to her. I truly think we continually underestimate kids.
I know that this blog is a bit random, but I have been doing some "critical thinking" about what my essential learnings, "big picture" really is. My ultimate goal is to get students to question, question, question, and seek truth, answers, possibilities, and ideas. And of couse, use multiple languages to do so!
I often think that adults get so into the blame game or get overly bogged down with why something happened instead of being problem solvers on how to fix something or make it better. Why is that? I think right now I am just in a thinking state and I am trying to make sure that my methodologies in the classroom reflect these big picture importantcies I have (is importantcies a word? Oh well, I guess I can use it anyway).
This constant introspection is exhausting!

After reading the Edutopia interview I was very inspirered. I have recently read a book titled, "Three Cups of Tea". The book is a nonfiction and the story of Greg Mortenson's life. He is traveling throught Afganistan building one school at a time. His goal is to bring education to people who either have none, or only have Taliban schools which concentrate on building the Taliban (of course). He is now the CEO of the CAI and I think has a great deal to teach all of us.
Anyway, I truly believe that education is the answer to world peace. (I happen to be an obsolute optimist that does believe in world peace, by the way.)
However, I worry about the individual freedoms of all of these children. Would they really have the freedom to become a buisness inovator for/with their parents and come out of poverty? Do they have the freedom to read all that is out there, make their own judgements and conclusions and discuss those possibilities without being punished or worse by their government, rebels, or extremists? I know this blog goes a little beyond my classroom (to say the least), but I don't know how we can insure that the students/children who receive these laptops have the real opportunity/freedom to be educated.