Blogging Penitence

There exists an interactive media design principle that suggests web design needs to move users to take action, and blogs specifically should induce conversation. Strangely, I never felt my blog was accomplishing this task (i.e., people rarely leave comments, or I have only been contacted but a few times in regards to this blog). However, sometimes, its only when you stop doing something that you realize the influence it was having (i.e., I recently broke my rule to never eat "mixed nuts"—I've always felt a psychologic allergy to nuts. Needless to say, I was really sick the next day.) Well, it turns out after leaving my blog for a few months (due to dissertation commitments; BTW, I am finally done with my Ph.D.) I was contacted by several people who asked me: "what happened? Where you at?" So, in an effort to once again become a regular blogger, I am committing myself to blog a min. of once a week (I feel if I give myself a number, then I'll actually write, and hopefully only write things that are of some significance. For example, did you know that "an American kids drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That's more than a million every year... ignorance in the U.S. is not just bliss, it's widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common core found that a quarter of U.S. teens could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and few than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900" (see Bob Herbet's column from the Times). I am not sure what the answer is, but technology in the classroom seems to be a viable answer: if we can empower students with an interest and reason to be in school, they will ideally glean information. Technology can be a great motivator. If more teachers would empower their students with technological (and I am not talking just computers here. Technology involves engineering, manufacturing, automotive, computer science, design, etc.) options I would venture to guess that student drop out would decrease. There are several empirical studies that validate this belief, the problem is, despite these findings, many schools—heck, the entire educational system at a whole really needs a systemic change, where innovative pedagogy is accepted, promoted, and rewarded.