This investigation of the evolution of empathy and the ways it has shaped our development and our society is well worth the 10 minutes it takes to watch. If you have any students, I suggest you share this with them. Empathy is something we as teachers need and need to teach to all our students.
Since August, I have been on a journey working with some fabulous educators, instructional designers and just all-round wonderful women drafting outlines and creating the content for a chapter that will be published in a book which is being published by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning [also known as iNACOL]. We just completed our draft of our chapter and are so excited.
This chapter will present a student-centered model for online teacher mentoring. The one-to-many online model is designed to be scalable, self-directed, and leverages social learning. The program, Self-Directed Learning [SDL] Support Model: Training Educators for Online Learning, introduces teachers to ideas of self-directed learning, partnering pedagogy, and metacognition while orienting new and prospective virtual teachers to the online learning environment. To maximize impact and sustainability, this program employs the Cognitive Coaching model through a social learning community.
Without giving away all our secrets -you’ll have to wait until the whole book Lessons Learned in Teacher Mentoring: Supporting Educators in K-12 Online Learning Environments is published [due out in the fall of 2012]- we explain ‘how’ we developed and taught an online course which has helped many educators-across Massachusetts- become better learners and in turn better educators.
Our chapter goes into great detail explaining how we used self-directed learning techniques and skills to teach educators how-to understand and use essential self-directed learning skills such as: goal setting, metacognition, motivation, critical thinking and time management. We also discuss how we designed our online course, how we delivered it and how we improved it.
I can tell you that by implementing the use of social learning, collaboration and ePortfolios we have had a very good success rate with this online course. Here is what a few of our participants said about our course:
“This was a new way to approach teaching.”
“The course really helped me understand how to encourage and coach students not just around content but around linking content to their own goals in life.”
“It’s cool to watch students change over the course of the year. They start talking about what their goals are and what skills they’ve learned. Online learning puts their education in their own hands—it’s wonderful!”
Self-directed learners are everywhere, as Kio Stark is finding out as she writes her book: Don’t Go Back to School. This is a handbook for independent learning that shows you how to learn almost anything with or without school. Watch this video and read more about Kio Stark’s project here at Kickstarter
Nellie and I met at a local cafe to do this interview on what self-directed learning skills meant to her and how this training has impacted her thinking and teaching. With a simple background videos like these can impact others.
Watched a documentary on Steve Jobs and want to remember this:
“When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have fun, save a little money. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you.” – Steve Jobs
For some time now we have thought of the 2-sides of the brains, now British psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist looks at the evolution of Western Civilization through a neuropsychological prism. In his recent book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, is re-thinking this the left-brain right-brain concept.
McGilchrist is quick to point out that the old left-brain, right-brain clichés of the 1960s and 1970s were greatly oversimplified. Recent research has shown that both sides of the brain are deeply involved in functions such as reason and emotion. But the dichotomy is still useful, McGilchrist says, and should not be abandoned. Watch what RSA has done here and learn more about self-directed learning skills here.
