spaces of learing
The class makes me nervous. I’m slow when going from screen to screen. I’m not always certain where I should be.
I came into this class nervous because I do not process quickly. I also came into the class wanting to learn specific skills, specific literacies. I want to know how to set up connections with other classrooms around the world. I want my students to be able to participate in literature circles with kids from all over the world, I want my students who are doing research to chat with other kids from other places, and, with other students who are researching the same ideas and asking the same questions. Not only do I want to know how to set up these connections, I want to know where to find them, how to monitor then, how to maintain them, how to end them, and how to keep me students safe while using them. I also want to know what other questions I should be asking about creating an on-line community of learners.
My classroom in the fall has computers and a smart board. This is just-in-time learning, and more. I want to be able to communicate with my learners in a way that is close to their own everyday discourse. I sat in class Wednesday and listened to Dean lecture and watched the rolling chat happen on the screen. I do not believe one takes way from the other; in fact, I believe that this layering of learning adds to our teaching, and helps, if used well, focuses students. I will never forget the day an instructor introduced a balloon into a lecture… layers. What do I want from this class? I want to learn as many layers as possible so that I can offer as many layers as possible to my st
udents.
A challenge for me will be to find a space between my belief that blogging has an underlying egocentric base and is not necessarily needed as a personal tool for demonstrating, justifying or highlighting who I am. If you really want to know me, sit on a hill in silence with me, curl up on the end of the bed while I read to Jessy Lee or tag-along in a class with me, that’ll do it.
Wonderful start to transparent learning.
With regards to the egotistical nature of blogging, I’d say that can easily be true but not necessarily. As well, blogging is simply one of many tools that enable, instant publishing, two way communication and sharing of ideas. Other tools do that as well and hopefully we’ll have time to explore some of them. The key idea is its ability to connect people.
In my second year, an instructor commented on my persistence to pull away from being transparent in some situations, “There is no separation [of the personal and the professional]”. Even though I understand this to be true, for me, through this vehicle, among others, I know transparency is also an ideal. Transparency is a gift I am able to give when I can trust and that I give when I know who my audience is and when I know who my audience is not. In an effort to trust the direction of this course, I used my name in the title of my blog so my students can find my blog. Then I did a Google search, and voila, there I am. But what about when others find the blog? What about the absolute necessity for certain individuals not to find me or my family?
My daughter and I live in an environment of alarm systems, panic buttons, unpublished phone numbers, post office boxes, ever-changing code words and back-up plans. The notion that all must be transparent is, for us, a naive ideal, and, in fact, not safe. What I blog here, for the stranger to peruse, I don’t care (and yes, I’m aware I have control if others respond). However, what I post I must qualify and for that reason, my blog is scripted, and lacking in the ebbs and flows that bring beauty to sharing and storytelling.