On scrutinizing the master’s tool, the second “adventure”

As essential is the hammer and nail to the carpenter, so is the computer and a weblog to the teacher. If a carpenter can build a house, it is due to his skill with his tool. If a teacher can build a learning environment, it is due to his skill with his tool. This tool, so essential to the masters, and only to be found in the new castle types, is the weblog. Valiant Richardson echoes this sentiment, when he says that there is a trend that is moving curriculum toward a digital environment. Where paper once ruled, computers and weblogs are exacting this old castle practice.

The skills, such as reading, writing and thinking strategies are static, like Hammurabi’s code, which mustn’t be withdrawn from history past, present or future. However, blogging becomes the new context to bring these skills to bear. For instance, it is like giving a carpenter, bred upon hammer and nail, a set of power tools. The cuts, the nails, the buildings must still be made, but the tools by which one builds have transformed the carpenter’s capacity to work his trade. So too, teachers, given the technological tools found on today’s internet, can transform our capacity to work and cultivate the work and skills necessary for today’s kids and tomorrow’s future.

Take for instance, these 10 ideas, not Commandments, of how a blog can begin to push on the walls of the old castle:

• Promote anlytical and creative thinking
• Promote creative thinking
• Increases access and exposure to quality information
• A place to record: reflections, journals, writing prompts, student work, book club comments, student reactions
• Permits differentiation possibilities based on readiness and student interest
• Paperless, online filing of information, thoughts, ideas
• Collaboration with others (including peers, professionals, experts, and other interested individuals)
• Recording of meeting minutes, best practices, lesson plans
• School Websites
• Supports differentiated learning styles
• Corollate with standards that are common in language arts classes

"Weblogs expand the walls of your classroom," says Richardson. Indeed, I would take it further than Richardson and say that Weblogs break down the walls of the classroom by inviting you to a new seat, not for the elect of the roundtable, but, a seat among the histories that were, the histories that are, and the histories that will become.

Any faithful steward must pass this tool along to the next generation to wield and to protect.
~