Monday, July 4, 2011

The Entitlement to Change

Last week saw the NetHui conference in Auckland - a meeting of some of the best minds in NZ to discuss the future of the internet and what our parts were in  it. Now, apart from the obvious question "What was I doing there?" - there were a number of takeaways from the conference - but the biggest came from Larry Lessig. Many of you will know that Larry is a Harvard law professor, and is co-founder of the Creative Commons. He was the keynote speaker on Friday morning - and the 40 minute presentation he gave has left me in a somewhat mixed state ... a state of both unease and excitement.

Unease, because in a time of intense change, change by its very nature creates unease. Excitement because we are in those times where the network is allowing anyone to claim their "entitlement" and to recreate culture. He talks of "entitlement" and "entitlement yielding change" often in his early part to his talk. I'd encourage anyone to watch this - it is challenging. It's 42 minutes.

If you are interested in how the web, this network, is "yielding change", then these 42 minutes will fly past.


How will students exercising their "entitlement" affect what we do in our schools? This is the big question for me. Anyone got some thoughts?

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