Will Richardson voiced his frustration in a recent post about the trouble that he’s having getting teachers to focus on the potential of Web 2.0 tools to enhance their own personal learning.
Part of me wonders if he’s asking the right questions. It’s hard to tell what Will is saying to the teachers. If he’s trying to get at their own personal learning practices, it seems to me that the first questions may need to be
- What are your personal and professional interests?
- What are you passionate about? What do you care about?
- How do you currently learn and grow in those areas?
All teachers are learners because all humans are learners (okay, 99.99% of humans are learners; we all know a few oddballs). If Will can find out how these educators acquire and gain new knowledge that is of personal and/or professional interest to them (particularly outside of school for their hobbies, music, athletics, and other outside interests), it seems to me there then exists a natural opening to discuss how various Web 2.0 tools can connect these folks to various communities and content of interest.
Will, perhaps you’re doing all this already. For example, maybe you’re contextually embedding your participants’ learning by selecting one or more individuals, asking them what their interests are and how they learn and grow in those areas, and then illustrating in front of the rest of the audience how to expand those circles of knowledge and knowing using these new tools (look, here are 56 blogs about pomeranians! 204 blogs about orchids! a wiki devoted to knitting!).
I don’t know what your strategies have been, Will; this is just what I’d do. But I’d love to learn more (hint, hint)!
If I've had a single epiphany since starting this whole blogging thing, it's exactly what you're stating there. My mantra has changed from, "Hey - check out this cool tool!" to, "Hey - what is it YOU'RE interested in and how can we make that transfer to students."
Posted by: Scott Elias | July 22, 2007 at 11:13 AM
Hey Scott. I was a learner in a 3 day Will Richardson workshop one year ago. These are the questions he asked us and it's his training that ignited my passion and interest for blogging. I remember struggling with this because my job is my passion. I thought, cripe I'm boring, I have no deep interests! My friend was totally into baseball and created his blog from that point of view. And you and Will are both right, it's been all about my own learning ever since.
Posted by: Kimberly Moritz | July 22, 2007 at 08:13 PM
I second Kimberly in that Will also inspired me to start blogging. After listen to him at the MICCA conference this year I began reading his blog, which eventually led to me reading other blogs.
After reading his post you refer to and the plethra of comments that followed I decided to go a step further and start my own blog.
So for me, he did ask the right questions and challenged me to focus on my own learning. I believe this will make me a better educator.
Posted by: David Robb | July 22, 2007 at 10:16 PM
Scott,
These are great questions to begin any workshop on Web 2.0 tools with, so great, I am going to use them tomorrow in a 3-hour RSS workshop I'll be sharing with about 20 teachers.
Brian Grenier
http://bumpontheblog.etowns.net
Posted by: Brian Grenier | July 23, 2007 at 05:21 PM