#personal learning networks

Once upon a time, I posted to this blog on a regular basis. It was mostly a journal about my life in Japan and all the extraordinary people I met there. Then, after moving back to the US to attend graduate school at the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, VT, this blog started to lose some momentum, but posts continued to slowly trickle out. When I moved to San Francisco in 2008, the posts… just kinda… stopped.

Now, after many years of silence, I’m ready to resurrect this sucker with a new goal and focus. I want to use this online space to connect with other educators, music lovers, art aficionados, pranksters, and anyone else who takes the time to read whatever dribble I put here. 

I credit my interest in this resurgence to Will Richardson, an author and advocate for personal learning networks. A few years ago, I read his TED Book titled Why School?, which caused me to take a step back and examine the methodologies I was using with my students. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in 21st century education. More recently, I read his book titled Personal Learning Networks, which has really lit a fire in me to be more active online to make useful connections around my passions.

Hence, I plan to post some of my lesson plans and materials, in hopes of connecting and collaborating with other educators. There’s no sense in teaching in an isolated classroom while the bulk of human knowledge is accessible online. I also want to share some of my favorite musical discoveries. I’ve been an avid listener my entire life, and I’m sure someone out there has similar tuneful tastes. My day job affords me the opportunity to join university art classes in a variety of subjects, so I’d like to share some of the epiphanies I experience. I’m sure there are folks out there that know much more than me and can further my understanding. Finally, the internet is a crazy place, so I need a place to rant about my crazy Bay Area Burning Man friends and post pictures of my cat, right?

"most importantly, these days, I have a well-tuned Twitter feed full of people who like to post links to genuinely interesting stuff. Let me reiterate that bit: for FREE, you can arrange for a bunch of well-connected strangers to push interesting news to your screen, LIVE, updating every second.

So, that kind-of acquaintance whom you feel you should follow but whom talks mostly about sandwiches and the shape of his turds? Dump him and add @qikipedia or @brainpicker instead. To start with.

We've been looking at all sorts of digital and social media during a '23 things' programme at my organisation and last week we focused on screencasting and webcasting. I've become convinced over time that we're underestimating the power these, and other, tools have to allow us to make the most of the best learning network we have at our fingertips: each other (or to use the jargon our personal learning/knowledge network). I know many of my colleagues are absolute whizzes at technical things which I have no idea about, rather than going on a training course or receiving a three page 'how to' document I'm dreaming of the day that I can encourage them to share their knowledge with me and others with a quick screencast. I know that for simple technical things I'd much prefer that to a long email or a lengthy session taking me away from my desk.

I work with a great bunch of committed, smart and interesting people who I'd love to engage with more creatively. In any organisation people's ideas, brainwaves and reflections are the dynamo which will keep that organisation succeeding in the future. It's perplexing then that so many companies and organisations are fearful of tools and approaches which could support the sharing of that learning.  In a recent blog Harold Jarche argued that we should be aiming for loose hierarchies and strong networks in our quest for personal and organisational learning and I completely concur. Euan Semple's book 'Organisations don't tweet, people do' should be compulsory reading for all managers, expertly making the case for the social workplace in simple, easy steps.