Here’s Chris Brogan’s talk on serendipity at last week’s Web 2.0 Expo, here’s my earlier one relating to generativity, and here’s one of the best examples I’ve seen of serendipity & generativity in action on Twitter:
No, they’re not on the same list, nor are Jeff Jarvis and The Clever Sheep ever normally in the same conversations (and as far as I know, neither follows the other). and the links are to two different posts on quite different blogs. But they complement perfectly, and they came to me in perfect sequence.
This is a completely random event.
Here are the links (both worth reading if you’re interested in education or social media; if you’re interested in both then they’re both must-reads) in reverse order for the sake of narrative:
• 21st Century Educators Don’t Say, “Hand It In.” They say, “Publish It!:
I see schools like this all too often. Educators, parents, families are dazzled by their flashy assessment and data systems, charts showing kids progress, and fancy, static, one-dimensional bulletin boards. All this is evidence of what their kids are “capable” of achieving. Isn’t it ironic? All this data, assessment, and evidence that lives nowhere that is authentic, relevant, or important to the actual student we are trying to develop. It takes more than collecting data or creating on computers to be a 21st century school. If educators are not having students publish regularly they are NOT preparing them for today or tomorrow.
• My case for moving beyond a printed senior thesis
By posting this project online I hope to open it up to involvement from those outside of the traditional Whitman community. A piece as long as this thesis will truly gain traction in the hands of the readers. By expanding the pool of potential readers and participants I hope to bring in voices and critiques that I would not otherwise hear. [...]
The reality is that the communication on the web happens faster, reaches more readers, and is inarguably the future of writing.
I love that by writing this, quoting those posts, and linking to them, they become a demonstration of the principles their authors hoped to express. This is what publishing has become, this is what education is becoming.
Two individuals took it upon themselves to publish something online, two more liked those thoughts enough to share — none of them could have known how much I’d benefit from those choices [they helped me express my own thoughts -- like "midwives," to use Plato's metaphor] — and here I am sharing it with you.
Knowledge has to live or we lose it.
It doesn’t live on paper — and it doesn’t live in computers (or in the cloud) either. It lives in what we do with it, what we think, what we learn, what we make, how we remix and share it with others.
By taking a bit of time to compose a few thoughts and place things in context, at least we’re perpetuating the potential for creativity. Do that and eventually good things will follow.
We don’t always know where creativity will lead, but I certainly know where creativity starts: Here, now, always.
