Aloha from the beautiful island of Kauai! This weekend, my wife and I had the opportunity to travel on our own without the kids (something we haven't done in the 7+ years we've been parenting). It was quite a nice weekend. Our kids are wonderful, but the ability to connect and actually do things that the kids might not be up for has been wonderful. We spent our first day driving up to the north coast and hit the northmost beach in Kauai. Luckily, I grabbed my snorkel gear and headed out beyond the rocks to be fortunate enough to see some of the amazing Hawaiin Sea Turtles. Sea turtles have become my absolute fascination. Last year I managed to swim with some, and I feel like all of my snorkel adventures are really a search for more of these peaceful, wonderful, huge creatures. They are truly amazing and probably have a lot to teach us regarding just 'being'. After my turtle adventure, we caught a beautiful sunset and then headed out for dinner and some live music to cap off a wonderful eveninng. Yesterday started with a delightful breakfast at our B&B and then we headed off to meet Berta Pires (a name that should sound familiar) to hike Waimea Canyon. We had a GREAT time. The hiking was great, the views were spectacular and the company was exquisite. It was such a pleasure to meet Berta and enjoy such a wonderful experience together. After hiking, my wife and I ventured to do a little shopping and then headed to see the Spouting Horn (a funny loud geyser like natural thingy where the water shoots high up into the air based on the surf). That led to dinner which was quite nice, but quite honestly, we were so exhausted that being done with dinner and heading back to our B&B seemed even nicer. Today is our last day on Kauai and we are heading on a boat tour (a motorized rubber raft) to the Na Pali Coast. It is supposed to be a great way to see the beautiful cliffs, the coastline, and even some caves. It should be a fun adventure to end our wonderful weekend.

So, I just felt the need to share about my weekend. I see a blog as an opportunity to share whatever one would like, so there it is :)

With regard to this week's learning, I managed to do most of my reading prior to the weekend and post to the forums. I really enjoy the thoughts that come up with regard to the future of learning. Gregory brought up a valid concern regarding the possibility of reverting back in time. His point is quite valid as I believe we have seen this many times in history. We advance, only to return to a more traditional approach after what could be considered a failed experiment. I responded to Gregory with the following and felt it is poignant with regard to my feelings on the week's topics:

"Gregory,I appreciate your bringing up the importance of real human contact. I do not think we are moving away from that. I think that education can mix technology and human interaction without sacrificing either. One thing that comes to mind for me as the idea of renting videos and people having these great home entertainment systems in their homes. Many would have feared that it would have been the end of people going and spending money to see films at the theater. I do not think that happened at all. In fact, during the same time that video rentals have grown, so have the massive multi-plexes. I think (hope) the same will be seen in education. I hope we will embrace the technology for what it is and allow it to help us expand educational opportunities, but not take away from the face to face interaction. In fact, many large brick and mortar institutions seem to speak of online education as a means to exapnd their offerings as they are full to capacity in their traditional classrooms. I have not seen too many institutions close their doors to be replaced by a completely online infastructure.
Thanks for bringing up this point. I think it is an important point to explore."

I am very excited about what is possible as we move forward in education. I believe it is important to continually reeavluate systems and education is certainly one worthy of reevaluation as the world around us changes. After all, education is all about preparing people for the real world, so for the education system to remain dormant while the world evolves would only be a disservice to students and the world they are entering into.

Aloha and Mahalo,

Steve