In his book, Shirky describes a "ladder of activities that are enabled or improved by social tools" in which "The rungs on the ladder, in order of difficulty, are sharing, cooperation, and collective action." (Here Comes Everybody, p.49). While I am sure Shirky never intended for anyone to use these steps as a planning tool for scaling lessons and helping students own their own learning and build their own networks, I do think the four verbs work nicely for 21st Centuryizing (if you will) what we could be doing in the cla.

I have been spending some time recently responding to a listserv discussion that has many brilliant, award winning teachers on it who are not sold on the idea that we really are going to have to change education to remain relevant; that *they* are going to have to change.  I thought I would share my most recent letter. One member writes-I’ve been waiting and wondering when someone would take up the thread that Mark began during our "Here Comes Everybody" discussion, wherein he talked about how the printing press put scrib.

Some would argue that John Dewey was one of the most influential thought leaders on education in the twentieth century. His ideas on experience, reflection, democracy, community and environments for learning have made their mark on education for generations to come. In my opinion, he was a man before his time. We seemed to understand what was important in education in the 1940s and then somehow got side tracked. See how familiar this sounds. "The world is moving at a tremendous rate. Going no one knows where. We must prepare our children.