I wanted to take a step back for a moment with this entry and think about how we ( adults and children) are engaging the web. Recently, I spoke with a friend of mine who told me a story about how he and his son had engaged in a conversation which led to a question, and then together they sought the answer via the tangible qualities of a physical artifact, and then the reproduction of an artifact on the web.
Such instances of connectedness in engaging in critical cognitive practices for both parties are especially important in dealing with the widening gap in how information is disseminated and discussed. Together, both father and child interacted in a learning project that:
1) Fostered trust between adult and child through collaboration
2) Allowed for evaluation of what is considered "real" and what is not in regards to certain types of information.
Now imagine the classrooms that are allowed to engage in such practices. Take a smaller step further, and imagine that this is applied to schools and communities engaging in such practices to alert each other to how much better we can be. Such a small example of taking the time to learn with each other utilizing what we can safely surmise as the greatest evolution of communicative ability and information dissemination since Gutenberg's mass producing printing machine is of utmost importance. I speak of this not only as a teacher, but as a citizen and human being inhabiting a growing digital space that is in danger of growing to such a point of segregation that the power of our abilities to learn how to teach and talk to each other about the wealth of information may be lost. We have failed as a nation with such an irresponsible rate of illiteracy because we did not figure out how to work with the printed artifacts correctly for the betterment of each other, instead choosing to create a power structure that still has ramifications today. If we are to move forward, this must not occur again.
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