The World is Changed--annual revisit

This post kicks off our annual exploration into the power of social media on a deeper level.  As we begin year five of Revolution! it seems appropriate to revisit and update the information.

The opening line from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy seems an appropriate title for the first Cultures Revolutions blog post.  Our class at Catlin Gabel School in Portland, OR is setting sail on a unit called Revolutions!.  We are studying the period from the Enlightenment to World War I.  Along the way we will study revolutions in science, industry, politics, society, information, and agriculture among other topics.  Students will be blogging about topics they wish to study more deeply or just pique their interests. They will be including relevant links and images in their posts.  Additionally, they will be commenting on one another's posts in thoughtful, deep ways.



Five years ago, students began adding their thoughts to this blog.  The experience was mind-blowing.  Seventh graders responding to tenth grade writing, teachers responding to students.  Seventh graders checked their posts multiple times during the day to see if there were comments even though they knew they would have to respond to the comments.  They were more than willing to continue the dialogue.  What seemed like a classroom experience quickly morphed into a global project, unplanned, full of surprises, yet filled with deep thinking.  Exchanging posts, tweets, emails, and viewpoints with John Zingale, Thor Prichard, Doug Bundy, Jim Wysocki, Mike Gwaltney, Jay Hurvitz, and Richard Kassissieh clearly paid dividends.  If it is true we stand on the shoulders of giants, I am humbled to have been hoisted up by those who prodded me to get going.  My goal, again, is to 2-4 kids post per day.  Our class has a calendar so students will know when their post is due.  Of course they may write their post in advance and set it to go live on the day they are this blog's guest author.

It is my hope that readers of this blog from around the world will engage the students in thought provoking conversations.  Their posts represent the skin of the onion in their thinking.  It is up to those who comment to peel the skin back one layer at a time.  Hmmm....I guess blogs are a bit like ogres.

The world has changed.  I feel it in the water.  I feel it in the earth.  I smell it in the air.  There is no turning back now.  From desktops, laptops, ipads, and smartphones, let the process live.

Alexa, let the conversations begin!




Photos courtesy of https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMcfVTw76CfB0gZcKKc9zKKWG4BoZG3OHMvzA0AJ4A5sr9ZkUacawWY5OMOBtwwI-AM0x-ISeC_YUDe2zagVGdXcgtZHTOaDk53il8-s9UxlM-WDwWXv7LWv19qgAXxoZ99bbsAXV56nA/s1600/industrial-revolution-children-labor.jpe and http://adgcreative.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/digital-conversation-470x3911.jpg