I need more time

There are so many things that I want to do, and I want to do all of them well, but somehow that isn't happening.  I have read great swathes of information for ETL 401, and I have made notes about my reading, and pondered the offerings of various authors, but I haven't blogged those thoughts, and  I should have.

I was going to blog yesterday, but I got sidetracked by Joyce Valenza.  That woman must have a time turner, or a TARDIS or something.  She is truly inspirational.  Because of Joyce, I now have iGoogle as my homepage, complete with meandering penguins, and I am setting up Delicious bookmarks.  And I feel like there must be an easier/better way to do this than the rather longwinded process I am making of it, but I haven't quite worked it out yet.  I've got Joyce in my delicious file.  I feel sure I will go back to her time and again.

Yesterday I read Cibulka et al, and their review of the literature on learning organisations.  It seems to me that lack of time is something we all struggle with.  Excellence takes time, and we are time poor.  the reading suggested that even our own personal development needs to take a more constructive approach, they call it "a proper sequencing of knowledge acquisition" - the steps should begin with the why of what we are learning, then examples, then an allowance for supported application.  Not just a workshop, then let loose.

The authors also insist that collaboration must be authentic, not forced, not artificial, but how can you get people to change the way they do things if they don't want to and you aren't going to make them because then it isn't authentic?

There are so many demands on our time that, sometimes for survival, the best option is the one that takes the least time.  This may not be the best for our own development or for student learning, but when you are stretched, and wondering how you can fit it all in, it can seem like the only solution.  If only education was such a priority to society, that it was thought to be worth investing more in.

I'm not sure how to say what I think without it sounding like a political statement.  I don't want that.