Transparency=Leadership by Will Richardson
Will Richardson believes that transparency is and will be a big part of the global Internet experience and he says that the leaders in this technological world need to allow students and fellow sojourners to not only see how they learn but they have an obligation to model transparent and effective learning. Educators need to share what they have learned, teach even outside of the classroom and contribute to the global community. Part of my reluctance to embrace Facebook and Twitter was due to the inane conversations I saw posted.
Almost anything someone posts will end up being seen by a group of people, eventually. If we lead more open, transparent lives, we won’t live in fear of what will be said about us. I believe that it was a young lady that mentioned the similarities to Christianity. I agree with her. Living a hopefully, ethical and transparent life frees you from fear and allows you to embrace others thoughts and ideas. It allows you to contribute to the global conversation.
Transparency in learning, allows educators to better understand how their students learn and can give the educators a way to help focus, direct and encourage each learner through the process. I know not everyone agrees with this. One blogger mentioned that he didn’t believe that total transparency needs to happen immediately because not everyone has joined the digital world yet. One blogger seemed to think transparency had to include the person’s personal life and that wasn’t what the author was saying at all. And then there were the comments of the last blogger who was just downright ugly. This is why being transparent can hurt. There is no need, in my opinion, to be deliberately mean. He called him pompous and self-absorbed elitist. He basically claims that anyone willing to be transparent on the Web is just placing a big “Abuse Me” sign on their backs. I tend to agree more with Will Richardson than the last blogger. While I do believe that we do need to be cautious about the type of information we are willing to give out on the Web, there is still much valuable knowledge and information that needs to be shared and we shouldn’t be scared to contribute our share.
Citation:
Richardson, Will. "Transparency=Leadership." Weblogg-ed: Learning with the Read/Write Web. 6 Apr. 2009. Web. 4 Aug. 2009. <http://weblogg-ed.com/2009/leadership-transparency/>.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, Lori. This is exactly what Richardson is talking about. And his believes that our children will live in glass houses because of the Internet and we need to prepare them to live gracefully in that culture.
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