Online Education

I am fortunate to witness the birth of a new phenomenon in Chilpancingo. I do not mean UFOs, I also keep a blog in Spanish on that, OvniChilpo. That one has been kind of dead since late last year. I mean Online Education. The blog also in Spanish is in: Habilidades Para la Comunicación de las Ideas.

There you can see how my students write in the blog, and keep their own.

For personal reasons I had to leave Chilpancingo. Three good friends in the faculty, helped me with the class. Now I am back, and am very pleased. This is a little report.

As I expected the new generation of Digital Natives, I am teaching, only need a a bit of prodding, and they take off. I think that it is a minor crime, or crime, that other faculty members are not following the kids. Intuitively the students know that they have to conquer any and all technical difficulties to master these tools. They see the power of the tools. I believe that the limit is not lazy students, but ignorant teachers.

I follow their work through Google Reader, I keep getting pleasently surprised at the darn things these kids think of doing. I do not tell them everything they have to do. I do give some direction, but most of all, I encourage their initiative to become self taught. It helps that I had my kids homeschooling for sometime. Now one of them went to college to Marlboro College in Vermont, and the other is going this Fall to the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

My parents trusted us, and the six of us got PhDs, or equivalent qualifications. Now the next generation is also showing autonomy.

I want to encourage my students here in Chilpancingo to take off!