Understanding teaching and learning in general is what I do. It's what we all do. The difference now, for me at least, is that the game is changing fairly rapidly. I am old. Not doddering or slipping, but I am definitely a digital settler at best and the technology curve seems to be getting steeper every day. I have to be pretty active to avoid falling behind.
People are online. Students are online. It turns out that online is a place. It is a fairly strange place where people act differently than they do in other places. None of my friends walk up to me in the grocery store and give me their relationship status. They do that online, however.
Online is a big place. But, again, this big place is different from other big places. If I go to a football stadium, very few of the others in the stadium can hear what I am saying and when I finish speaking, my words don't linger, they simply melt into the susurrus of the crowd. Online, my words are heard by everyone. Everyone I know. Everyone who knows everyone I know. And they last forever. So I should probably try to be selective about what I say.
Unlike most old people, I do not scrunch my face and wonder why the kids of today want to spend so much time online. Rather, I want to understand how to understand them and to find a way to find them.
I need to understand online teaching and learning so that I can understand online teachers and learners.
Hi Bryan. There's no such thing as old! Because if we are talking numbers, I'm old too. But I'm not. Old is a mindset, and if you are here you have a growth mindset. It does in fact turn out that online is a place, but we never get from point A to point B without small steps along the way. The most important thing to know here, and hopefully you will start understanding as you go through some of the introductory material and videos, is that nothing has changed. Teaching and learning online is the same thing as teaching and learning. You just need to adapt a bit. Classrooms starting using pencils and paper after using chalkboards and chalk for so many years - and the size of the paper was immense and students could write endlessly instead of having to fit what they wrote on their own small chalkboard - and now they can go on the Internet and search the world's information as opposed to being restrained by a book or an encyclopedia in their lap. It's just evolution. I'm so glad you're here, and we all have much to learn from each other. Thanks for posting, and I look forward to working with you!
ReplyDeleteBryan, the space and the anonymity it affords presents new and interesting challenges. I find myself to have reached the point I will not master it all, but I work to be able to engage in a productive manner.
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ReplyDeleteOne of the things I have noticed over the years is that K-12 methods of teaching has not changed as much as teaching has in business. True, adult learners are different and they have mastered the basics, but many are still learning to new skills. In business most of the basic information is presented online and then assessed. Then according to specific need people who where once "instructors" are now "coaches" work with each on their individual needs.
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