Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom : Horizontal Classrooms

Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom : Horizontal Classrooms

Command and control is "dead man walking." It will not survive in a world that is no longer built on command and control relationships. And our students will not be prepared for their futures if we continue to hold on to it.

Will Richardson

 

Will has really helped me clarify in my onw mind at least what might seem an esoteric bit of theoretical fluff,  but I believe that theory is the source of practice. Thanks, Will.

 I am reminded more and more of Edwin Abbott's math fantasy/satire Flatland. Weblogs and folksonomic technologies are the incomprehensible world of 3-D while hierarchical, taxonomic technologies (learning management systems like Blackboard and WebCT spring to mind)are the 2-D flatlanders. I would turn Friedman's tepid metaphor of flattening on its head and demand that we view the world as becoming more multidimensional all the time. We are moving toward a metaphor we don't understand, not toward one that we do. That's the bite of it. Moses couldn't delineate the promised land, but he sensed it. As Abbott said in his seminal book, "Flatlanders tell the truth about flatland." In the parlance of his book, we (you, me, and tech attuned) are squares who have been touched by a sphere.

We live in a world we know ain't "right", but knowing that doesn't mean we know what is true. It is the mystery Faulkner spoke of when he said we should never mistake the facts for the truth.