LightintheWoods

I can’t afford books. I live the life of a student. I read what is published online but often like to sit in a comfy chair to read from paper. So I visited the library. Now I am reading two insightful, opininated books Wikinomics by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams and The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen. Wikinomics takes the leftist view, Cult of the Amateur the right. I can relate to very well to the arguments of both books and look forward to reading them this afternoon.

I wanted others opinions on these books, so I sent a shout out via Twitter.

Here was some of the feedback from two edubloggers that I follow and who’s opinions I definitely respect.

That is not where this sharing ended. While searching for more info on both books I came across Lawerence Lessig’s critique of Andrew Keen’s, Cult of the Amateur. I knew this would be of interest to Darren, so I tweeted the link to him.

I don’t know about any of you, but this type of collaborative interaction definitely builds my background and demonstrates the power of the online network. This book talk has taught me much more than any of the Oprah Book Clubs I have participated in and this all happened within the last two hours.

Today was a big day.

Alec Couros has invited me to participate as an assistant with his EC&I 831 Course. Tonight was the first class via Adobe Connect. I am very excited about this opportunity. Not many folks are teaching assistants without first taking the course, nevermind a graduate level course.

Dean Shareski made my day brighter by inviting me to join him on Friday to shoot video and later accompanying him to work with classrooms within Prairie South School Division.

Having these mentors is quite a honor and definitely a testimony to my learning of educational technology over the last while. These two individuals are instrumental to my personal/professional development and I am honored to work this closely with them so early in my career.

Later in the day, I returned to the University of Regina to complete the final course of my Education Degree. The course is on the the teaching of writing, so I have no doubt this blog will see improvements in my writing. Returning to class feels odd. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a second year course and I am ready to graduate with my second degree. It may be that I feel ready for the classroom, I feel ready to teach. Perhaps, it is because I have taken control of my own learning process and the class is disconnected from the network (so far). I had some ideas for bringing web 2.0 to my peers. I am going to speak to my prof about creating a common tag for internet resources. Hopefully I will coerce somebody to join me on del.icio.us. I already have plans to create a wiki for my major project, and hopefully I will be able to push the idea on my group members.

I continue to explore, learn and develop professionally. Thanks be to the network.