Hello Tony:
We have corresponded before, and someone told me today that you were following this blog. Thank you. With the greatest of respect, a gentle inquiry: can you share with us here any information about your planned collaboration with Bob Compton, which Bob reported in a recent comment here on 21k12.
As I know you know, this blogger views your book, and your vision, of 21st century education to be highly inspirational and spot-on. On the other hand, I have expressed the view that Bob Compton’s 21st century education vision is sharply different from your own, Tony, and Compton’s vision is not the ideal for which we should be striving.
Your collaboration could be fascinating, perhaps presenting contrasting 21st century visions. But until we learn more, we cannot help but be a bit confused. Your admirers are curious– can you tell us more?
Respectfully,
Jonathan Martin
October 14, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Dr. Martin,
Do educators take some sort of secret oath? Do you have a secret handshake?
Is there a secret code word among teachers as to with whom they should or should not collaborate?
What I love about Tony is he views our disagreements as a healthy creative tension and a chance for both of us to find the best answer and sharpen our thinking.
Good grief, I’ve never seen such paranoia outside of religious cults! 🙂
Bob
October 23, 2009 at 7:28 am
Greetings Jonathan,
Bob Compton and I are, indeed, discussing a potential collaboration around a book and accompanying videos, and we expect to come to an formal agreement soon. I find Bob’s perspective on education–as a high tech venture capitalist and entrepreneur who understands the importance of science and math in the new global knowledge economy–to be important and challenging to my views as a “recovering” high school humanities teacher. While we don’t agree on the value of Advanced Placement courses, (Jonathan, I thought your list of things you’d like to see in Bob’s next film was outstanding,) there are many more things about which we do agree, and I think he makes great films!
Perhaps more important, we share similar goals and continue to learn from one another. For too long, educators have been on Mars and business leaders on Venus. It’s time we got down to earth together.
We’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, Jonathan, I look forward to my visit to St. Gregory’s early next spring. I hope to visit BASIS when I’m there, as well, and Bob has agreed to visit High Tech High and New Tech High with me.
Thank you for your important intellectual contributions to these discussions and best regards,
tony wagner