I’ve said time and time again that learning is a journey and blogging about it helps not just for documentation purposes, but with a growing community, actually challenges and supports. Can I describe it in a way that would facilitate someone to not only understand but also do something similar (sometimes we call these processes as meta-cognition and teaching, respectively)?
Why is it important to ask this question in the first place? Looking at learning as a process is a good learning strategy, quite often because the process is more transferrable than the content, e.g. mathematical thinking viz-a-viz maths curriculum.
I digress….
Today, I was fortunate enough to stumble on @Veritasium’s post on the effectiveness of videos – which is interesting in itself and worthy of a reactive post (in the meantime, I did tweet about the veritasium site). I mention it here now merely as attribution for leading me on to a 2011 TED talk by Sarah Kay – If I should have a daughter.
There’s much to glean from this video like being a mother, story-telling and connecting – she’s got a wonderful way with words. Truth be told, I struggle to focus on this one thing about learning journeys. Sarah started and ended with powerful renditions of two spoken word poetry : B and Hiroshima. In between these, she described her journey to being a spoken word poet as involving 3 crucial steps (yes, it’s a list):
- I can
- I will
- I continue to grow, taking what I know already to help me make sense of that which I don’t yet understand. She goes on to say that this is not an end because it’s a constant evolution.
Simple. Powerful. True.
If I were to describe any sort of real learning on my part – including my blogging journey – these 3 steps fit the bill. I would be happy to use this model to describe my journey and, in the work that I do helping teachers integrate technology, facilitate teaching and learning.
For those who prefer nouns to verbs, here’s a parallel list (my interpretation):
- Self-belief
- Decision or Choice
- Growth (others like to call this lifelong learning)
This is how I describe mine – thanks to Sarah. Does this make sense? Do you have another way?
Loved your post and here are my thoughts!
Thanks Anna, I’m off to read your post now.
cheers,
Malyn
Malyn, I guess I think of myself as being a life long learner, but I hadn’t really considered the two steps before the growth. I can and I will. Thanks for sharing. I loved the Sarah Kay video. I just watched it. Thanks again for visiting my 8th graders’ poems too. 🙂
Denise
Hey, Hey,
Denise put me onto your post. I love that there are people out there who really want to inspire and motivate us educators. It can be so easy to get bogged down in all the negative, day to day stuff.
I recently discovered TED as well and I just did a post about one of their speakers Charles Limb.
http://dramateachersnetwork.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/fantastic-find-ted-talks/
Thanks for sharing this talk. It certainly is inspiring.
K.