Stephen Downes

I mostly like this post because of the beautiful photo of a loon at the top, which I would show here, but it's owned by (and presumably licensed from) Getty Images, so nobody's really pure, I guess. I'll use one of my own photos to illustrate this post, which anybody can copy. Anyhow, Audrey Watters argues that far from leaving schools unchanged, "these technologies have changed education. They have reshaped how we think about thinking." And that's not wrong. "They have shaped the expectations of what students and teachers believe they can do -- not just the 'everyone should learn to code' stuff and the twisting of the purpose of education to be solely about job training and 'career and future readiness,' but about how students understand their own abilities, how they see (or don't see) their own agency, how they control (or don't control) their own inquiry, curiosity, attention." I think, if you look at the world a certain way, that's all you see. But when I look at the world, I see people who do look to more than just jobs and career readiness. I see agency, creativity, community, and society. Maybe we can't expect schools to help everyone aspire this - but we should.