Nocking the Arrow

"Autonomy is what distinguishes between personal learning, which we do for ourselves, and personalized learning, which is done for us." - Stephen Downes Why is feedback critical to learning processes? Why should the learner be at the center of the feedback process? Where within Schoology can personal feedback be shared and leveraged by learners? What do paper airplanes have to do with personal learning and feedback? Premise On the second day of the SchoologyNEXT-19 conference, more than 100 adult learners gathered to build paper airplanes and discuss these questions. Here’s what we learned. Those who’ve attended my sessions know I subtly push the envelope, taking some risk, in the hopes of the transfer of the unique experience to professional learning activities and classroom adventures. If we don't want passive "sit-n-git" in our classrooms, then we should design conference sessions and staff meetings to model the active learning we...

"We need to move beyond the idea that an education is something that is provided for us, and toward the idea that an education is something that we create for ourselves." - Stephen Downes In this age of abundance of information, shifting classroom pedagogy isn't nearly enough to make learning in school more relevant and authentic for the learner. Self-directed learning ( andragogy ), and self-determined learning ( heutagogy ) are the ideals necessary in making students " future ready " to live and learn in a web-connected world. While original research applied these concepts to mature learners, it has become apparent that even young children have an abundant capacity for recognizing and directing their learning. Anyone who has observed toddlers learning how to walk and talk understand the motivation and skill development that quickly develops during these processes. Considered by some to be on a learning continuum, self-directed learning, and self-determined ...

No one can logically argue that current and future education won't be based largely on our ability to leverage social networks for learning. There is plenty of rhetoric describing the emergence of web 3.0, but how many educators are practicing what they readily admit is the foundation of making our students "future-ready"?  I applaud Cale Birk for suggesting talk can be cheap, and it's time to feature action. In his post, " #EDUDO - The New Hashtag ", Cale asks educators to transparently share artifacts of learning using the Twitter hashtag, #EDUDO . Several years ago, my sons became interested in downhill skiing. It had been some time since I had been on the powdery slopes, but skiing presented an opportunity for the three of us to actively learn and grow our skill together. I wanted to be able to articulate and demonstrate safe and effective skiing to my sons. In order to do this, I did some online research, talked to experts at the pro shops,...