RJ Stangherlin’ Blog

NOTE: I cross-posted this on my Salisbury High School blog.

On of my PA Discovery Educator Network friends, Jennifer Dorman, a.k.a. cliotech, is an avid blogger with a widgetized digital footprint. We are a part of each other’s social networks, and that is a very good thing for me because I always learn from her footprints. Usually my learning takes the form of acquiring a new Web 2.0 tool or tutorial, but often I learn things that were eluding me, like how to show I had a digital footprint (that’s next on my to do list when I have some time out). But her recent cross-post about connecting the right-brain creative accidents of Evan Williams (creator of Blogger, Twitter, Odeo, and his company Obvious Corporation to Discovery’s Webinar with Dan Pink and A Whole New Mind was an insightful connection. Interestingly, however, what lingered from her post was her first sentence admission that she had “unplugged” for several days.

I, too, unplugged for several wonderful days with my family, who traveled many miles to share the holidays. But unlike Jennifer–who returns with a wonderful technology post from her reading The Economist–cover to cover, I read Real Simple and Body + Soul, January-February 2008, selectively concentrating on whole living. ‘Tis the season for resolutions, and while RS focused on organizing the new year, B+S targeted living healthier in the new year. Similarities: undoubtedly, since both are Martha Stewart Omnimedia Inc. publications. In that way that sometimes I purchase something because “it speaks to me,” I subscribed to Body + Soul’s “10 Healthiest Resolutions,” embracing #4 about breathing deeply (hard copy p. 101) because it resonated for me the need to unplug to recharge (not really an oxymoron) to live richly, the goal of this month’s magazine, and what I suspect we all do when we unplug. The problem is that we just don’t unplug enough. It’s not about being off line, although sometimes that’s where I start. It’s really a lifestyle change. I think of how Viana LaPlace‘s unplugged kitchen returned me to the simple authentic joys of cooking. And how Jennifer’s simple unplugging–and that from a high-end, high tech achiever, allowed me to unplug without guilt and make time matter with those who really count: family and friends.

So, how will I achieve balance and simplify my life in the new year. It will, I suspect, connect to what I have come to think about abundance, one of Pink’s 3A’s. While Pink’s definition of abundance links to his theories of automation and Asia as reasons why people in the U.S. cannot compete at their current level of abstraction and logical thinking in the marketplace, Terri Trespicio offers a different reading of abundance. In “More Than Enough” (pp. 107-112, B+S), she asks how we achieve a better life without letting the quest consume you. Her answer: striking a balance between not enough and way too much. That’s my new year’s resolution: finding balance. Making room for the new and creating spaces for the old. Rediscovering center somewhere between too little and too much. And like everything else wonderful that happens through social networking, I have so many friends in the Discovery Educator Network who will keep me on course, educated, and timely.

The buzz about the millennials continues since Morley Safer’s 60 Minutes segment aired in November. Poised to enter the workforce, they are hardworking, resourceful, and tech savvy multi-taskers. So why are these Gen Ys taking so much heat? Important to them: self, friends, family, rapid rise. Not as important: the older generation. After my friend, colleague, and Star DE Jennifer Brinson got the faculty room discussion started, our school district’s Director of Data and Technology, Randy Ziegenfuss, blogged about the millennials. He asked if the older generation was not willing to shift their paradigm of work or if the younger generation need to shift their paradigm? Has the concept of work changed from one generation to another? For some of these answers, I turned to A Whole New Mind.

If you happened to attend the Dan Pink webinar, you noticed the chat with 187 participants on multiple threads flew like the Concord. Despite directing comments to @name, at least 6 strands competed with my attention for Dan Pink’s message. So I focused on the main event, and he made so much sense. If we think about the new paradigm for today’s market economy, if we think Pink, then we do embrace a different mindset for the future. We all shift, or perhaps we get left behind, standing somewhere on the fringe in numerical proportion to our resistance to understand the impact of Asia, Automation, and Abundance. While older may struggle with the 3A’s, younger clearly does not.

What always puzzles me is the reluctance to embrace change, especially when there are really not many other options. If manufacturing, mining, and agriculture were the ways to grow money–not merely exchange it–in the agrarian and industrial ages, and if the information highway has been superseded by the creative age, then how we grow learning, minds, creativity, and the wealth of a nation will change. As educators with a challenge to fit digital learning to digital natives, the millennials are waiting–and to their credit, quite patiently, I think–for some of us to catch up. For me, it really has been a journey of Discovery. The good that I bring daily into my classroom comes from the Discovery Educator Network, from your wisdom and talent and from the Discovery Education products. So, as I venture back to blogging, I hope you will welcome a new voice to help Jennifer share the task she has so ably–and dauntingly to me–held for the past year. I’m glad to be back, and hope you will join me in adding your thoughts and comments to our ongoing discussions.

A tidbit: Jannita will be starting A Whole New Mind discussion group. Email her if you would like to continue the conversation.