Buffy / Growing up Canadian / Blogs

Day 1 introduced the course and provided an opportunity to see and hear Buffy Sainte-Marie.

re Buffy: Your comments are posted on your blogs, so I will not repeat any of that here. I wrote down several of her comments, relevant to our course.
First "I do things differently." A useful manifesto, which allows us to explore beyond the obvious. It is, I assume, meant to be a manifesto for creativity.

Second: "Taking tradition to tomorrow." I really like that one. It links the past to the future. These days we are losing our historical knowledge and our historical context. Which is why I began with "Growing up Canadian." It reminds me of the mission statement for the Aboriginal Television Network, which used to be posted all over on billboards: "Telling our stories to all Canadians." We cannot just tell our stories to ourselves; we need to tell our stories to all. I like that.

Third, and along the same vein, "North American people have a history, a presence and a future."
Perhaps she is talking about North American First Nations peoples, but that can easily be extended. All peoples have a history, a presence and a future. So does the field of education.
It is a good guide for a course on 21st century curriculum. We must look at schooling from its history, its presence and its future. That was one of the things I said at the beginning of this course: that I cannot define what 21st curriculum means. Is it the past eight years? Of course. Is it the present? Of course. Is it the future? Yes, but not too far into the future. Perhaps we can reasonably think ten years ahead. Certainly, we cannot plan for the end of the 21st century into the years 2090 and beyond.

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Over to blogs. Don't let the technical side get you down. Blogs are about communication and about content. Don't get the wrong idea. The first time you got a new ... anything... you had to give time to get adjusted to it. So, don't give up on blogs just yet...