Grounding Digital Inklings

Here we go! Until blogging has been a distant friend about whom I knew very little. Our informal contacts were casual and somewhat shallow. But now it's time to get to know this friend better and develop a mutually beneficial support system.

I considered naming this Digital Ink, something I'd heard or seen somewhere in the past, but if I'd heard or seen it in the past, someone else had coined the phrase and I didn't want to claim it as mine. While inklings has nothing to do with ink, it did foster the idea, and inklings, as vague notions, may be perfect for this setting. While digital ink may be writing with computers, Digital Inklings will be open to all thoughts connected to compters and electronic gadgetry.

Despite the man-made or artificial implications of computers, they certainly do not conger up thoughts of trees and flowers, or living off the land, many entries may start with an observation of the day weather. First of all, we are all immersed in our environment which affects our activities, our moods and who we want to see at that time. This morning the skies were clear with a slight breeze at sunrise, this the first day of 2010. About mid morning clouds moving and within minutes, the rain gutters were over flowing. Cleaning them was on my list of things to do today. Now, several hours later, the sun is glaring off my laptop screen. I guess the gutter cleaning is back on the list.

Mark Twain, I think it was, who said something to the affect that if I find myself marching in step with everyone else, it's time to reconsider what I'm doing. Hence I typically don't use templates and perhaps that's why I never jumped onto the blogging bandwagon. But now it's time to study and understand this blogging and social networking phenomena that is changing the society of the world in just a profound way.

I grew up with computers, oh, not from birth or childhood, they only existed in think tanks and behind military gates, but as they evolved in public, I was there. I punched cards in the 60's, established remote connections in the 70's, bought my first personal computers before Bill Gates started his adventures, but I don't own or use a cell phone. They intrigue me but so does the texture and smell of fresh sawn wood.

Now we're started with the basic blog. Now we will test the waters of technology, the use of technology by society and we will try to keep a critical eye on how this affects education, both learning and teaching, and how education can use this technology to affect learning and teaching.

My new year's resolution: to enjoy what I doing rather than do only what I enjoy.