Saturday, May 14, 2011

When Learning Becomes An Event

I had a fantastic week of connecting, sharing and learning with many colleagues from around the province of Manitoba as I attended the Riding The Wave conference out in Gimli. It's always a treat getting together face to face with like-minded educators, and I often find that (for me, anyway) some of the richest learning experiences take place between sessions as participants reflect over a cup of coffee and extend their own learning.

I was invited to present a couple of sessions at this year's conference. You'll find one of these two sessions below - 'When Learning Becomes An Event'. I've been thinking a lot about how I learn and how our students learn. This session proved to be an opportunity to take participants on a little journey to explore the idea of extending the learning by celebrating even the little things that happen in our classrooms and in our schools.

There's been so much talk in recent years about '21st Century Skills'. It's time for less talk and more doing. Teachers and students need to see tangible ways of incorporating social media into the teaching and learning that takes place in their classrooms.

If you just want to poke through my slidedeck, you can find it posted on Slideshare. However, I think you'll find that the content just isn't complete without the narrative. For that very reason, I recorded a screen capture of the actual presentation which you can watch right here...


If you're willing to take the time to view my presentation (about 70 minutes), I hope you'll take two extra minutes and post your own reflections, questions, comments, etc...

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Making Our Learning Transparent

I had the opportunity to attend my second TEDx live event just a few short hours ago and my head is still spinning.  As I drove away from an amazing day of sharing, learning and networking at TEDxJuanDeFuca, my mind was reeling.  Such a diverse array of speakers and each of them rose to the occasion in a very big way.

I've been reflecting on each of the speakers I saw and I must say - they were all brilliant :-)


But I've also been thinking a lot about how I learn.
And how I make my learning transparent.
And how I learn best by sharing.

One of the ways we all learn best is through sharing.

Yesterday: I shared some of my learning through tweets and images.  I talked about my learning.
Today: I'm writing about what I've learned and how I learn.
Tomorrow - (or another day...) - I'll share my learning however and wherever I can.

How do you make your learning transparent?