Val Donnan’s Blog

“Today’s imagination is tomorrow’s knowledge” – Nimai C. Suna

This quote has pressed an image on my thoughts this week. How true it is that the children we live and work with everyday are truly the knowledge of the future. We have a great responsibility to increase their own current knowledge based on the knowledge that we have received from our life experiences, but also to support their imagination. Supporting one’s imagination can seem like an impossible task at times with federal and state mandates, assessments and learning standards, curriculum guides and time lines, but the truth lies within the quote. If we chose to teach in the same manner that we were taught, we are limiting the imagination of a whole generation. As parents and educators, we need to stretch ourselves and nurture our own imagination. I have challenged myself to take a few extra moments with my own children and students to allow them to create a visual to go along with the story that they are telling me; time to build a model to go with the current unit of study; and the time to experiment with a true expression of themselves building their self confidence using programs on a computer that I have yet to experience.

The great inventors and scientists were not successful the first time they attempted to “light a light-bulb.” It took imagination, risk taking and self preservation to continue to explore the possibilities. Without imagination, risk taking and self preservation our knowledge for the future will truly be limited. I challenge you to let your own and your children’s imagination flow.

In the last twenty four hours, I have gone from feeling like my hands were tied to being released to an unknown world within technology. I have started this blog as well as a wiki (success4all@wikispaces.com). I first felt empowerment and now I feel the pressure of getting everything uploaded and linked. I ask for patience as I learn through trial and error, supportive plurks and twits and youtube tutorials. If you have any suggestions for improvements, please let me know because I feel like a fish out of water flopping on a pier.

My goal with both of these spaces is to provide a service to educators and also learn more about myself and the resources available for all students to be successful. My core belief is that all students can learn, but need to be provided the opportunities to be successful based on their own learning styles. I have personally witnessed the success of many students when technology is in place to assist in them communicating their ideas and having ideas communicated to them.

Today’s focus is to flop back off the pier into the safe harbor of the water in the world of technology.

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