Now What?

I'm not sure what the future holds, even after eight very forward-looking weeks, so I won't say that this is my last post for this blog. It is however, my last blog post for the class, Technology and Leadership, and an opportunity to sum up and make sense of the ways in which I have been affected.

As has been par for my experience in this program, learning has come not only from the instructor and materials, but so much from fellow students as well. I came to the course looking for support in implementing technology solutions towards effective 21st century teaching and learning, in my role as a secondary school principal. While, along the way, I did garner some of that, my ultimate takeaway is much larger: a realization of--and an early "coming to terms" with--the reality of our place in a time of profound and unprecedented societal revolution.

That we are inherently apt to form groups, and to function collectively, is not a new understanding. That advancing technology--the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, cinema, the radio, television, computers, the internet--has progressively enhanced our ability to communicate and connect effectively and efficiently, is also not a particularly profound observation. But, as Shirky (2009) pointed out, and as we (collectively) explored in our shared blogs, the phenomenon of ubiquitous access, via mobile computing, to the internet (serving as an essential repository of the sum of recorded human learning, speculation, and creativity), and even more centrally, to one another, to form functional groups around any interest, purpose or goal, has ramifications that are profound indeed.

It is not so much that technology continues to advance in capacity according to Moore's Law, or that many aspects of our 21st century reality surpass what we imagined possible even two decades ago, as it is that through facile and constant access to the internet, more and more of us, globally, are simply and easily connected. Further, our connections--our comments, conversations, and choices--whether serious or trivial, picayune or profound are recorded and memorialized for posterity.

This changes everything.

I've been thinking about that a lot. I've tried to capture it with a variety of water metaphors (a flat lake, a tidal wave, a flood, a fast-flowing river). I have committed to making some changes in my approach to, and my relationship with, technology and social media. Collaboratively, we have raised a lot of big questions, rethinking, as Mike Wesch listed, copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetoric, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family, and ourselves. I have not (nor have we, in any appreciable way, as a society) come up with answers--though, I/we certainly have discerned trends and directions.

Somehow, then, as a result of our exploration, our study, our conversation, and our reflection, I am not any more certain of anything. I am, however, more comfortable, and confident, within that uncertainty. So, the answer to the question in the title (A nod to the What? So What? Now What? reflection protocol, Borton, 1970), is, "I'm not sure, but that's OK!"

There is an apocryphally Chinese blessing/curse, "May you live in interesting times." Aren't we lucky, that we do?

While that last sentence had a nice final tagline feel, this closure post would be incomplete without the following: I would like to thank our instructor, Britt Watwood, for facilitating a journey that has been meaningful, worthwhile, very influential, and enjoyable. And, I would like to thank each of my colleagues here who have participated together--a significant example of the internet as a tool facilitating productive collaborations. Thanks, everybody.

Borton, T. (1970). Reach, touch and teach. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Shirky, C. (2009). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin.