California Dreamin’ by Rob Darrow

My Google Alert email alerted me to the new online community established by Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and a host of other books.  I signed up today and the different functions include goal setting, my learning, my friends, my journal, my groups.

Interesting how Mr. Covey and his associates have learned about the importance of online community.  He recently completed an online question and answer session with the Washington Post.  Once again, another illustration of the power of online communities, online learning and online communications.

As mentioned earlier in this blog, I am in Cuernavaca with a group of students. On the first day, our group was divided into beginning and advanced Spanish speakers for our language class.

Yours truly is in the bottom right hand side of our class picture below (the only male in the class).

I have been in the beginning group since I have not been in a Spanish class for over 20 years. When we first arrived, I was comfortable with the basic words that many of us know – gracias, buenas dias, and most of my numbers. Our class met from 9-12 each week day and it soon became evident to me that I would need a lot more than this to become somewhat conversant. Now, to me somewhat conversant would be carrying on a conversation over dinner or being able to talk to someone about purchasing an item. In the class were students whose parents have spoken Spanish and English most of their lives but had not learned to speak Spanish, then there were students who had taken Spanish courses more recently than I. During the two weeks of our class, I became better at the basic conversational Spanish, but I realized how much more studying and learning I would need in order to become “conversant.” So, internally, I became frustrated at this knowledge and despite completing my homework each evening, I was disappointed in myself that I could not pick up this language more quickly. After all, in many of the classrooms where I have taught, most of the students’ primary language was Spanish and I heard it every day! I felt less intelligent than others who could speak the language more fluently.

Then, my frustration turned to reflection. I more fully understand the frustration of students who do not know the English language but are in our United States educational system. Like most students, they do not intentionally NOT want to learn the English language, it just takes time. And, based on their prior knowledge, some students will pick up the English language faster than others. As we know from brain-based learning, some are more receptive to language learning than others and some just need more time. My greatest realization was that just because I was not able to become more fluent in speaking Spanish did not mean I was not able to learn other things or should be treated as less intelligent than fluent Spanish speakers. So, my hat is off to all of those teachers who teach English to non-English speaking students in our schools. It truly is a miracle how a student can learn a new language and learn to read and learn math and make new friends and function in a new country all at once.

To email or not to email
To search the Web or not to search the Web
To blog or not to blog
To twitter or not to twitter
To ustream or not to ustream
To flickr or not to flickr
To use google reader or not to use google reader
To diigo or not to diigo
To youtube or not to you tube
To podcast or not to podcast
To go online or not to go online?
To learn or not to learn, that is the question!

This is my response after reading Joel Adkin’s post about not having time to do all of the new “cutting edge” technologies.  I can’t help but join in the thoughts I first read on Doug Johnson’s blog.

Good educators continue to learn new things and apply them to both their personal learning and their professional teaching.   This caused me to connect thoughts and ideas from this post, with NECC 2008, a recent news story about presidential candidate John McCain, and the study trip I am on in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

The continuing theme I have been hearing from the NECC conference  podcasts (I could not attend in person) is that as educators, we need to become “facilitators” of learning.  The increase of K-12 online schools and the number of students taking online courses affirms this direction.  If you don’t go online or use the online tools, how can you facilitate learning using these online tools?

I can’t help but reflect on this post and then contrast it with the recent news article that reported that presidential candidate John McCain has not yet gone online.  It is all a matter of making choices in how you want to spend your time.

I am thankful to people like Vicki Davis or David Warlick or Joyce Valenza or Steve Hargadon and many others who I follow for sharing their learning.  Through my blog reader, I have learned what they are learning and then, in turn applied the parts that work for me and apply to my job.

As you can tell from my other posts, I am in Cuernavaca, Mexico as part of a study group from CSU Fresno.  Because of my knowledge about blogging and use of Flickr, I showed the group how to use these tools to share our learning with our families - both personal and academic - back home.  Many of the members of the group had not heard of blogging nor flickr, but have become users because of the trip.  See our blog or our flickr to see what we have been learning.  (And, of course, I have learned a few more things about both of these tools after using them for this purpose).

It really is all about context and what fits with what you are doing.  Getting online is the first step in learning about the rapidly increasing tools and learning about the learning that is shared by others and, every once in awhile, sharing a little learning back with others.

I had no idea what the Pyramids of Teotihuacan were before seeing them in person in Mexico City.  The first challenge was to climb the pyramid to the very top.  This is a sacred place - both in the physical and spiritual sense - from the physical perspective, it is a place that many choose to climb.  Before we climbed up the pyramid, we had heard that it could take 60 minutes to climb.  What we found is that it took between 15 and 20 minutes to climb the many stairs up to the top.  In the spiritual sense, this was the central place built by the Aztec people and was a place of worship - the center of the civilization at the time.  The largest pyramid is called el sol, the second largest called la luna, and then there are several smaller ones that can be visited.  The fascinating part is the fact that anthropologists are not sure who built these pyramids.  However, they do date back to the first century.  At the height of this time, some say there were 24 million people living in this area at that time before the conquistadors conquered the area.  This is the same amount of people now living in Mexico City.

This is one place to visit if you ever make it to Mexico City.  And, yes, allow yourself at least 3 hours to visit the three different pyramids of Teotihuacan.

We made it to the top at about 4pm in the afternoon and did not have time to visit the other smaller pyramids.  The exciting part was that once we were on the top, we heard thunder -  dark clouds soon formed overhead and it rained.   We walked down in the rain and  headed back to the bus.

Here is our group from CSU Fresno - we all made it to the top!  An outstanding trek if you ever make it to Mexico City.

Our group is spending the weekend in Mexico City. We are currently on the bus and I figured out how to blog with my Blackberry. Yeah!

Mexico City has 24 million people and is the oldest city in North America. Along most streets are food and product vendors. One of the things I have learned about the Mexican culture is that everyone has several side businesses. For example, the lady teaching us Spanish also makes jewelry that she brought to class to share. We all bought some and I hope my daughter will like what I got her.

We are headed to the Basilica for a tour.

Incidentally, my communication with my daughter at home has been via email, text messaging, and the free Elluminate V-room.

Time for the tour. Hasta luego.