Essential Questions . . . Essentially

I want to spend my days a little less frantically.  

J.J. keeping calm on the deck at the lake. My inspiration.

I hope to direct my intentions towards that end with a fresh year, fresh semester, fresh realization that I am pooped – not making any resolutions.  And, I would like to sleep more!  So instead of drilling down on a checklist of stuff I gotta do, NOW,  I have started my semester trying to step back and take a big picture look at what we are doing here. 

I think I have been overly focused on trying to keep up with the educational trends and trying to keep things fresh and new with blood dripping off the edge.  That’s ridiculous. Not even possible.  In that fog I have forgotten to keep exploring the important questions with the people who take our classes, the essential questions.

They are good questions.

• Why is it so problematic, so much of a struggle to integrate technology into the curriculum, the classroom, education in general?
• Given that technology is a square peg we are trying to fit in the round hole of our students’ learning, should we even be making this effort – is this worth the change necessary or is it just another buzzy trend?  WHY?
• What will have to change for technology to have the impact we think it should?

I have some sage responses to these questions – you bet I do.  But that’s not how this works.  That’s now how any of this works! (Great commercial)  

How might you respond to these questions?

Just thinkin’
Lee Anne