Essays

Hello 2021: A new year — some old reflections:

2nd January 2021 in Culture and Technology, Education & Technology, EduLearn, Essays, Future Learning Lab, Notes from the classroom

It’s a new year and a new beginning … or possibly another repeat. A challenge at the start of a new year is to remember the pledges and resolutions from last year. Much depends on perspective. Some resolutions never made sense in 2020 or before: Be a better person, exercise more, eat less, talk more or less, write letters, visit parents, and you know — all those things that you either do or do not, regardless of resolutions. One perspective from 2020 centers on teaching, on being a teacher, on

Friendliness works

16th October 2015 in Conversations, Essays, Opinions, SF Chronicles

About a week into my current trip to Palo Alto and Berkeley, I find myself sitting in a place I know all too well: Peet’s Coffee House on University Avenue in Palo Alto — the heart of Silicon Valley. The first one for me, way back in 2008 when I first came here. And countless visits since moving home, moving back, and then moving home again, in the summer of 2015. Here today, in Berkeley tomorrow — and most likely I will find my way to the original Peet’s Coffee

Learning and global development

30th September 2015 in Current issues, Education & Technology, Essays, Internet, Journalism's digital future, Media Freedom, This week

Exited to plan for the upcoming BETT conference in Mexico City, where I will be doing two plenary talks to an audience unfamiliar to me: Spanish-speaking teachers and education managers. The notes are here, and by way of a few small points: [dg ids=”898,899″] How can one link the discussion of learning, technology and globalisation to the UN Global Development Goals? How should we think about that? From the rosy red to the realistically reliable – what does the research literature really say about these sorts of things? Is there

Sailing home; Flying Frenchmen on the beach

27th April 2015 in Digital Cities, Education & Technology, Essays, Media Watch, Opinions, SF Chronicles

Coming to California, and then just never leaving…. The story repeats itself all the time: You live here in the Bay Area and you meet nice people, talkative people. As today, when I walked with my family down by the Alameda beaches in the Bay, looking at the occasional swimmer, surfer and bird celebrating the last days of April. This is a wonderful place to do so. But I approach this guy working on his gear to get ready for the mounting winds. He´s from France, it appears. He is

Get lost exploring; A conversation in Tilden Park

4th April 2015 in Conversations, Essays, Opinions, SF Chronicles

Trailblazing the meaning of life with an old-timer Good things happen outdoors. On my bike ride this afternoon, I came to my usual spot in Tilden Park, on top of Berkeley looking East and in towards the mountains separating me from the Gold Country wilderness of the 1850´s. And here was this old guy just sitting there on the bench I usually end up on after my bike ride up some fairly steep hills. He was wearing a cap, toting the slogan “Get lost exploring”. This being America, we got

Nothing but paper; but then again a lot more

2nd April 2015 in Essays, Journalism, Opinions, SF Chronicles

….feels like a paper; OMG it´s a newspaper! Its NYT….: A regular Thursday morning (actually it´s not, since it´s Easter) finds me at the breakfast table with my view of the San Francisco Bay. It is a view that I will never quite get used to and also miss tremendously when we leave to go back to Norway. But something else is different this morning. I finally decided to go get the newspaper in the original format, the way a newspaper is supposed to be read — on paper. The

Morning coffee

16th August 2014 in Essays

In another early post on this site I have commented on my reasons for setting it up. Now, looking ahead to what this will be like a little less than a year from now, I am sure one of the comments will look like this — it has to do with one of those cafes where I sat writing many of these posts: ” I liked the mornings, going to a local cafe and taking in the atmosphere of people reading newspapers, chatting, discussing important things or just sitting there with