As I have said, I am a plodder. I finally finished watching the archived “collaborations,” and I want to thank everyone for their efforts in putting those together and making them available. I plan to participate in my first live “collaboration” this afternoon.
For my weekly recap, I want to focus on three points: streams of information, learning and teaching, and my goals for incorporation.
To begin with, I do like the image of “streams” of information. And while it’s not a perfect metaphor, it does allow me to justify for myself why I can’t “know” everything. Just like I can’t see or appreciate every molecule of water that rushes by in a particular stream, I can’t “know” everything. This acceptance has been a long, slow, grueling process for me, for I speak as a first-generation college student who went to graduate school, joined one of the best rhetoric and composition programs in the country through the back door, and felt always as the anti-Michael-Crichton (who famously quipped that he KNEW he was the smartest man in the room whenever he walked in the door). But this is a long story of scrabbling and plodding, so I won’t bore anyone with those details; however, I have only recently come to realize that the body of information, the “knowledge” that the best and brightest had, this static THING really did not exist. Instead, there are streams of dynamic information that are constantly flowing, constantly growing, and constantly under revision as new thoughts, new ideas, and new perspectives are added to the flow.
Accepting this “fact” then allows me to move along at my own pace: dip a toe in, scoop out a handful, step in, stick my head under, or float along a fork, only to get out on the bank, think about it, and start over again.
The first topics presented in ET MOOC (twitter and social curation) have provided me perspectives on sets of tools, some that I’m familiar with and some that are new to me. These tools and the conversations going on in the ET MOOC will provide me with a variety of streams to explore and ways to (re)consider the work that I do. I tell everyone that the iPad fundamentally changed the way that I do my work, and the social networking tools I am learning will fundamentally change the ways that I gather information, evaluate information, share information, present information, etc.
In this same way, my approach to learning and teaching are guided by my understanding that there is no static THING out there for students to KNOW, no content or perspective that is the CORRECT one. I’m much more interested in students learning HOW and WHY, rather than learning WHAT, no matter the course, and I’m convinced that the best teaching takes a “pull” approach to learning (Harold Jarche has an interesting take here http://www.jarche.com/2012/06/pulling-informal-learning/, as well as Radical Learners http://www.radicallearners.com/?p=255). In other words, I am NOT the expert in the classroom. My job as “teacher” is to put students in positions to learn, to facilitate their learning, to help them learn more effectively (and, hopefully, more efficiently). But they have to figure these things out for themselves and in collaboration with other co-learners.
For example, when I ask students to do a writing project, I tell them that while we use the final “product” as an end point, the ultimate goal of the project is to help them develop their skills as writers. THAT is what they should be learning. They need to practice and develop strategies that they can take with them into the future, beyond this project and outside this course. And this is a very difficult concept for so many of them because they have been trained to focus on the product, on the content, and have been successful delivering that content (“What do I need to do to get an ‘A’?”). Howard Rheingold’s recent comment on Google+ seems to speak of a similar experience.
As a teacher, then, I want my students to incorporate the things we do in the course as (an)other part of their own lifelong learning practices. This course is not something separate, but, instead, a part of all of the work and all of the learning that we do every day. Putting students in positions to learn at one point in their development, to me, is much, much more important than telling them a bunch of things to “know.”
So my goals for the ET MOOC is to incorporate what I can into my own learning network as seamlessly as possible. I worried about how to “deal with” all of the information and have seen many talk about information overload, but my plan is to approach all of the extra posts and tweets and sources as another (high-impact and focused) stream. While it will be laid on top of my current streams, I will work with the understanding that I can’t do everything, that I can’t see everything, that I can’t read everything. We all make choices and we all are limited by the amount of time we can devote to our work, our projects, our networks.
To help me meet my goals, I have set up a separate ET MOOC notebook in Evernote. I will explore Diigo more fully, reviewing the tools and beginning the process of setting up a network, groups, and communities. I want to play around with Scoop.it, as well. More importantly, I will examine my current process for gathering and evaluating information and look for ways to improve the ways that I go about my business. I want to be more effective, and, most importantly, be more efficient.
To conclude, I will offer a confession (and a commitment): I’ve been telling myself that since our semester begins this week that I can afford to be lax with my ET MOOC participation because it is “extra” work. However, if I’m honest with myself (and practice what I preach) then I should be incorporating these kinds of activities and opportunities (like the ET MOOC) within, and as part of, my regular intellectual practices. These opportunities should not be “extra” work, but a regular part of what I do every day, a regular part of my daily learning. So my commitment will be to organize my intellectual life as opportunities to engage with co-learners every day.
Time to take Crash for a walk.