That’s the question Seth Godin asks in his blog post today.  His whole post is a celebration of innovation and revolution.

Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that’s to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?

The first step is to define what it means to be “great” in whatever you do.  For my purposes, I’m going to start small: with the course I teach for pre-service undergraduates.  I think a great course would help students see how technology can support student learning in powerful ways by modeling that belief.  I think a great course would introduce students to a professional learning network that would live beyond the course.  Bring them into my world and hope they find it welcoming enough to want to stay even after May.

Each semester, the course gets more and more student-centered as I try to model the kind of pedagogy I would like them to adopt.  I haven’t created the course for the spring but am considering a complete project-based approach in which small groups become experts in the use of technology to support instruction in a content area.  For each area of focus (writing & publishing, data visualization, gaming & interaction, collaboration), they will research and share the resources and information they find with their classmates and create a guidebook for their particular area.  My role will be to guide them in their exploration, providing foundations in educational theory and practice such as TPACK.

In addition, I want them to see how social media including Diigo and Twitter can provide them access to a larger network of teachers.  Lani Ritter-Hall highlights research showing that Professionally Engaged teachers are more likely to adopt the kinds of pedagogy that I support and technology is one way to support that engagement.

I have a few weeks before the semester begins to organize my ideas a bit better and put together a course site. I think I’ll start from scratch rather than trying to build on past courses as a way to challenge my own thinking about topics and activities.  I invite your ideas as well…I have a chance to mold the minds of impressionable new teachers, what should I be doing that will help make them great?