who is this woman?

sometimes when I put my blogger address into the address bar, this site appears . When I sign in I get to my own site......this is a very odd phenomenon. Not so much identity theft as identity confusion I suspect.

Anyway - if you see Valerie say hi!

Collaborative Learning

I want to stress right away that this is NOT my video: it is one I helped to make in a collaborative exercise with colleagues I have never met - some of them thousands of miles away and operating in different timezones, from different continents.

When I get students moaning to me about how hard it is to get together (on line) to produce a group presentation, I am going to show them this!!

Actually to be fair, it isn't just students: work colleagues too complain they can't find the time/space to work together or even to learn about the technology that would allow them to do it virtually.

This video emerged from a group of busy, professional people who were largely participating in the learning event in their own time. The woman who created the original movie was commuting between Melbourne and Brisbane for a conference and was, at the time, beside herself with worry about the devastation of Victoria by bush fires.

Those who took part wanted to "be there", wanted to contribute, to make a difference and to learn. The goal maybe meant different things to different people but whatever it was, as individuals we felt committed to completing it.

We made decisions by consensus (or at least by noone objecting if some people took a lead)and volunteers stepped up to the mark to get things done.

The saying goes, "where there's a will, there's a way" - my guess is with projects that fall by the wayside, or with groups that fall apart, there is just, somewhere, a lack of will for it to succeed .........

Through the looking glass....

in a thoughtful exploration of learning and management @ffolliet caused me to wonder if it is possible to take "untrained" managers or students of leadership and management and support them learning "on the job" simply by providing a space for them to reflect on their practice.... or do we need in fact to provide initial "basic training" which is then honed by experience, supervision, coaching and reflection into "mastery"?

I mean, do we not at the very least have to provide "training" or induction into the process of reflection so that the learning process can begin?

This reminds me of some reflecting I have been doing elsewhere on the subject of.... reflection. Which comes first - knowing yourself or the ability to reflect? For me the answer is that we probably first learn to reflect in dialogue and through that process we start to know ourselves - and then we can go on to reflect by ourselves too. If we are lucky we learn this through talking with our parents and friends and then with great teachers. Then, more formally maybe with coaches, supervisors and managers....

When I was training to be a counsellor the question was how people make the first move from unawareness to wanting to become self aware. The answer then too seemed to be that relationship was the key - according to Rogers, people gradually learn through their relationships how to trust another's feedback as useful for their own development, and ultimately, how to provide that feedback for themselves.

So how do managers move from "doing" and practising according to skills and methodologies they have been taught ("programmed knowledge" as Revans called it) to reflecting, developing their own style, growing into "leaders"?

And how do students move from churning out assignments in response to teachers' questions, reproducing other people's thinking in academic essays, and into a deeper level of learning where they ask their own questions about the things that matter to them, and where they can both apply what they learn in the real world and reflect on that application and its effectiveness?

My "answer" is to try and develop processes that will get learners engaged in dialogue with one another, with me, and with themselves so that reflection becomes a habit.

This is not a new idea. Schön talked about this in the 70's. Coaching in the workplace, clinical supervision, action learning are all processes - indeed relationships - where reflection is taught, encouraged and supported.


In on line learning, spaces such as blogs and wikis can provide students, managers (or students of management!) with places to engage in reflection where they can receive feedback, engage in dialogue and reflect some more. Teachers (and other learners) have an incredibly important role to play in helping others to become more self reflective through dialogue of various kinds - through discussion boards and feedback on assignments for sure - in helping people to write, tell, sing or video their personal story....or as Winter calls it - the unfolding drama of gradual discovery.

15 minute manager

one of the techniques for "virtual leadership" we discuss in the module is the coaching conversation. Most managers usually complain they have no time for such luxuries ..... and you can't possibly manage people effectively over the phone.......but I thought this short piece had some good practical suggestions for catching up with members of the team.


http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/02/the_31_coach.html

we don't always need long meetings or formal appraisals to let people know they are appreciated and check whether they need support.

Personal Learning Environments

A picture created by the children in the Hole in the Wall project Feb 15th 1999

A mish mash of thoughts this week sparked by a number of separate but converging discussions

@ffolliet, @weavermiles, @sfpeaky have all been asking the same question this week (in slightly different forms and for different reasons)- how do we get our learners and colleagues engaged in communicating and collaborating on line?

Students complain they don't see why they have to use wikis, colleagues complain they don't have time to learn about all this new-fangled web 2.0 stuff.

Age doesn't seem to be a common factor as the one group are in their 20's whilst others are 40+. Usage isn't mandatory in all these cases so that's its not just that they are being awkward or rebellious, and there are fabulous role models out there with everyone from Obama to Jonathan Ross (!) on Twitter - so its obviously trendy: does the reluctance then stem from apathy? fear? lack of technological skill?

I suspect that the key has to be in the title of this blog post: learning environments are highly personal - each individual will have their own story of previous technological failure, a fear of looking stupid, experience of being criticised for getting it wrong in a new social setting (I agonised for ages about how to "retweet", for example, or whether/when to request friendships in my Ning community....)

So it may be different in every case but most conversations I have had with those reluctant to dive in seem to start with: "I just don't see the point".

And that is the point, really: people will learn to use something if there is a point to it, if they have a reason for doing so. My technophobe partner, for example, who normally avoids the internet as though it were the work of the devil, downloaded and taught himself how to use iTunes, because he is passionate about collecting music.

So one way that has been put forward is a mixture of carrot and stick perhaps: award students points for on line engagement - to make collaboration on a wiki a central part of their programme (that'll get them interested!) or make certain key information available on-line only .

But this also has to be supported with thorough training, access to the technology and exemplary modelling from the top - don't expect people to get on board if you are just waving at them from the platform..... you need to be blogging, tweeting, wiki-ing right alongside them.

Isn't use of web 2.0 just a "leadership of change" problem like any other? People will always be reluctant to embrace change unless they see it is meaningful, feel themselves supported and have a leader who is modelling the required behaviour. At least that is the conventional wisdom.

What then do we make of the Hole in the Wall experiments carried out in India by Dr Sugata Mitra? PCs with Internet access were dropped into small Indian villages without training or context and groups of children taught themselves to use them...(the adults, interestingly, made no effort to engage with them).

Finally - my personal learning story of this week. I responded to a Twitter message from a "friend" (someone I met on line through the Ning Digifolios site) who wanted a buddy to learn Spanish with. I suggested another Ning friend who had expressed a similar wish. Over the space of a couple of days the three of us set up a date and time to "meet" in a free on line classroom , accessed an on line learning programme from BBC languages and had our first somewhat chaotic lesson.

One could question the wisdom of this as a learning experience: we are none of us Spanish speakers nor particularly expert at the language.
I am English and living in Nottingham: Maria is Portuguese, from Lisbon and Natasha is Russian and was speaking from St Petersburg.

With no teacher to guide us, how can we expect to improve our Spanish language skills?

I don't know yet how this is going to turn out but I know that I did manage to practice speaking and writing, that we each took it in turn to help and correct one another from our different knowledge/skills levels and that we are as a result eager to go on learning, speaking, supporting and preparing lessons: I personally can't wait for next Thursday.

And there was something else for me about the whole experience which I reflected on later: when I was a child growing up in the 60's, I could never have imagined that an event such as this could have happened. Not just that the internet would exist and give me the ability to speak simultaneously to people in different countries, but also that one of those people would be Russian! It is perhaps because the world is constantly changing, because the change to come is unimaginable now, and because I want to be the change I want to see that I am involved in education, in the education of leaders and in on line education.

So that is the point for me.