Reading Writing Responding

When we think back through our learning, there are always those aha moments, those situations, that have a lasting impact. Such moments come in many shapes and sizes, maybe an odd passage in a book or a random video seen online. So often though they have an impact that is far beyond their intended purpose. A recent moment that has had such an effect on me was +Alec Couros ' simple suggestion made during an interview with the +Ed Tech Crew  that everything can be a resource online. By approaching resources in this way, our understanding moves away from being an actual object, lets say a textbook, to a resource as being a way of seeing something. In this sense, a resource stops being a noun, something named, ordered and categorised, and instead becomes a verb, a way of approaching something, interpreting it, questioning it. In much the same way, PLNs can be thought of in much the same way.  So often we limit ourselves by seeing PLN's as something made - conta...

In response to the PLN Challenge that is going around at the moment, +Peter DeWitt broke with the traditional by simply posing one question,  "What inspired you this year?"  and an open invitation for anyone to answer. So here is my response: Do Extraordinary Things I think that the first thing to consider is what it actually means to be 'inspired'. The Oxford Dictionary defines inspired as: "of extraordinary quality, as if arising from some external creative impulse." I think trying to capture what is 'extraordinary quality' is a very personal thing. It makes more sense though by reasserting it in Peter's original question: "What encouraged you to do extraordinary things this year?" In many respects, I think that 'being inspired' and doing 'extraordinary things' is a way of viewing the world. A lens to look through to reflect on everything around us. Here then are some of things that encouraged me to try a...

As I have written about elsewhere , a small amount of furore erupted on Twitter last Saturday in response to Johanna O'Farrell's tirade against 21st century learning habits in The Age titled ' Splashing Cash won't Fix Australia's Broken Education System '.  One of the things that I really notice whilst following the conversations through a medium like Twitter is that moments like this really draw a line in the sand and bring the tribe together.  Three questions that arose out of the ashes was:  Do moments like this further the wider conversation in anyway?  What is the role of the connected tribe in regards to continuing this wider conversation?  What does it take to move an idea from a point of change to evolution? Connected Learning At the heart of all our connections, whether online or not, is our PLN. There are many different definitions for PLN's including: personal learning network, professional learning network or personalised le...