So, I can’t get that image from my mind.  I listened to most of Tom Brokaw’s book about the sixties and he conveyed the sense of the world changing, of new freedom and power for people who hadn’t had them before.  Is that what the snow day video is all about: young people asserting new freedom and power, this time through a technology that allows them to bypass the “usual channels.”  I would argue this might be a healthier version of dropping acid and rolling in the mud.

Saturday is get organized and clean something day at my house so I’m going to make this short.  I finished the outline for my 21st Century Assessment presentation.   I’m going to start with the whole snow day thing.  Maybe I’m making too big a deal out of it, but it just seems to hint at what we really mean when we talk about 21st century skills.  This is more than manipulating the technology: there’s a creativity there, enhanced by access to the tech.  In the outline, I embedded one of the video responses that is a suggested reading list for the woman.  It’s very funny: again, it’s about the creativity rather than the technology.

As we worked in the office this morning, we listened to Alan Parsons Project.  Started with Eye in the Sky and then moved to Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which is based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.  One of my favorites.  And it occurred to me that Parsons’ take on Poe represents a great example of what I would think of as a 21st century assessment.  He interpreted the stories both lyrically and musically, demonstrating his understanding of the stories but also using them to build his own knowledge.