This week’s fire hose learning activity felt more like baptism by fire. I am generally confident when it comes to efficiently managing loads of information and juggling a variety of tasks without great difficulty. The assignment required to access an assortment of online events as well as networking tools in a more purposeful manner. Well, it was not as simple as it appeared at the beginning. Some events and tools seemed overwhelming, unproductive and highly superficial, and others were engaging, inspiring and thought-provoking.
One of the activities that I enjoyed the most was listening to some of the 2014 Global Education Conferences. Having the chance to sit back and watch the conferences was a great learning task for me. I particularly enjoyed Marek Beck presentation "The Future of Learning"; it inspired me to think about course design and goals beyond “content mastery”. What is the purpose of education? To teach students to excel at accumulating knowledge or to apply it outside “the bubble” of the school setting. Shouldn’t we prepare them for a life outside the school? In dog training we have a process called “proofing” which means teaching a dog to respond efficiently, accurately and confidently to a series of commands outside his/her usual surroundings and in the face of tough distractions. This proofing process is much longer and challenging than teaching the dog to master the “content” of the task. The same should happen when it comes to human learning. Mastering the content cannot be the top priority but rather the application of this information in a variety of situations outside the students “usual surroundings”. I also enjoyed browsing through edWeb. Apparently I am a big fan of webinars. Who knew! I bookmarked a few conferences and webinars that I wish to finish listening to or listen again.
The CANeLearn site is a good source but I need to spend more time navigating through it. I particularly enjoyed the calendar feature because I was able to add it to my own Google calendar. I am also interested on reading the “State of the Nation: K-12 Online Learning in Canada” as they may provide a good perspective of the development of online learning in Canada during the past few years.
In terms of social networks I think I am beginning to enjoy using Google+. I even shared the link to Marek Beck’s conference with a little comment! Twitter and I on the other hand keep trying to connect but is not working between us. I opened a Twitter account a couple of years ago during a District planning day. The intent was to connect with people in our district but it was not what I expected. Twitter makes me feel bombarded by information that only makes sense when I dig deeper to get the point of the original post. Maybe our disagreement is related to Twitter’s 150 characters limitations. As you can see by the length of this blog post, short conversations are not my “cup of tea”. I intent to continue working on our relationship. Maybe Twitter and I can come to an amiable agreement.
One of the activities that I enjoyed the most was listening to some of the 2014 Global Education Conferences. Having the chance to sit back and watch the conferences was a great learning task for me. I particularly enjoyed Marek Beck presentation "The Future of Learning"; it inspired me to think about course design and goals beyond “content mastery”. What is the purpose of education? To teach students to excel at accumulating knowledge or to apply it outside “the bubble” of the school setting. Shouldn’t we prepare them for a life outside the school? In dog training we have a process called “proofing” which means teaching a dog to respond efficiently, accurately and confidently to a series of commands outside his/her usual surroundings and in the face of tough distractions. This proofing process is much longer and challenging than teaching the dog to master the “content” of the task. The same should happen when it comes to human learning. Mastering the content cannot be the top priority but rather the application of this information in a variety of situations outside the students “usual surroundings”. I also enjoyed browsing through edWeb. Apparently I am a big fan of webinars. Who knew! I bookmarked a few conferences and webinars that I wish to finish listening to or listen again.
The CANeLearn site is a good source but I need to spend more time navigating through it. I particularly enjoyed the calendar feature because I was able to add it to my own Google calendar. I am also interested on reading the “State of the Nation: K-12 Online Learning in Canada” as they may provide a good perspective of the development of online learning in Canada during the past few years.
In terms of social networks I think I am beginning to enjoy using Google+. I even shared the link to Marek Beck’s conference with a little comment! Twitter and I on the other hand keep trying to connect but is not working between us. I opened a Twitter account a couple of years ago during a District planning day. The intent was to connect with people in our district but it was not what I expected. Twitter makes me feel bombarded by information that only makes sense when I dig deeper to get the point of the original post. Maybe our disagreement is related to Twitter’s 150 characters limitations. As you can see by the length of this blog post, short conversations are not my “cup of tea”. I intent to continue working on our relationship. Maybe Twitter and I can come to an amiable agreement.