mpowerment feels better to me. It, in the end, is the word -- the idea -- that sets us up for a more student-centered classroom because it is about what the students get from the experience once the class is done, not what happens during the class. It also allows us to do away with the notion that the classroom is always fun. It's not. Let's look at coaching for a moment... a coach who is worried about engagement as the goal lets the kids scrimmage most practices because it is engaging and fun. But an empowering coach puts the kids through smart drills that allows them to play their best basketball during the games. Those days when you walk through the offenses and the defenses 100 times aren't always engaging... in fact, they can feel like a lot of work. But they pay off. And that's what we want in our classes. It's o.k. if there are days when the work that kids do feels like work. We have to be o.k. with that. And we have to understand that school is work... but that it can be meaningful, powerful, empowering (and even engaging) work. And that the work we do together in school means that kids can apply that work to their own lives in ways they see fit and that allow them to thrive.
The most profound impact of the Internet, an impact that has yet to be fully realized, is its ability to support and expand the various aspects of social learning. What do we mean by "social learning"? Perhaps the simplest way to explain this concept is to note that social learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning….