In all the rhetoric...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

I won't usually get political on this blog, but as an educator listening to all the harsh and absurd rhetoric going on during this interminable campaign season, I had to quote one of our fundamental documents. Education is what allows people to pursue their happiness, and governance is supposed to help secure our rights. What I'm proposing in this blog seems to fly in the face of institutionalized education, and in some ways it does, yet while education is a right secured by our common governance, it should also be considered a self-pursuit, with responsibility and choices left as much as possible to each individual.

Personal Learning Map

Design for a future database/wiki/device/app hybrid:

• A resource database started from Bureau of Labor Statistics information about U.S. careers but expanded to include pathways between skill sets, ways to acquire skill sets, and crowd-sourced evaluations of points of connection
• A wiki that allows constant upgrading of the database content, especially in terms of extracting viable learning pathways for Students