Hey everybody,
I received many compliments from teachers about your graphic novel and magazine projects. We also received quite a few tweets that this was the highlight of the conference. Congratulations everybody and thanks for being such wonderful hosts. You guys are amazing ambassadors for our school.
Inspired by the work and ConnectEd I want everyone to think about what question we could look at around how your generation should respond to the challenges of globalization. Japan responded in a particular way and rapidly modernized. However, we shouldn't just study the past for its own sake, we need to engage the problems that are facing us today. Thomas Freedman from the New York times sums it up some of the forces in our own times:
- We are increasingly taking easy credit, routine work and government jobs and entitlements away from the middle class — at a time when it takes more skill to get and hold a decent job, at a time when citizens have more access to media to organize, protest and challenge authority and at a time when this same merger of globalization and I.T. (networked systems like Facebook and Skype) is creating huge wages for people with global skills (or for those who learn to game the system and get access to money, monopolies or government contracts by being close to those in power) — thus widening income gaps and fueling resentments even more.
One of the teachers at ConnectEd was looking for a PowerPoint from the Social Networking day we hosted here at CSS that informs this thinking. Until I get it up on the Connect Blog here it is:
Social Networking Day KeyNote on ways to marry historical inquiry with critical citizenship
