Friday, October 12, 2007

Multiple Intelligences

This week I attended the fireside chat with David Warlick as a kick off event for the K12 Online conference. I followed that up with a demo of Ustream.tv with Will Richardson. I ended my evening feeling like my head was going to explode.

Both experience involved watching, listening and reading simultaneously. I found it very difficult to listen to someone speaking while reading what people were writing about what was being said. I could only focus on one stream of information at a time. And, since it was live, I couldn't pause to catch my breath. When I was done, I wondered if I had learned anything. There was so much going on, that nothing really sunk in.

This was my first experience with this kind of learning. I remember when I started reading articles, blogs and discussion forums Online. At first, I printed everything out. I found it very challenging to read on the screen and make sense of what I was reading. I needed to see it on paper to process the information. I wonder if attending to multiple sensory inputs is a learnable skill. In a growth mindset it is. The more I put myself in these situations the better I will get at taking everything in.

So I am going looking forward to the K12 Online conference experience as a place to learn and improve my skills. In fact, I've even signed up to moderate one of the "As Night Falls" sessions. I hope by the end of the conference I'll have grown enough to do that.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Elizabeth,
My experience exactly just a few weeks ago attending an EdTech Live event. There was audio, and while listening I had to follow along at the sites that were being discussed. At the same time there was a chat in the backchannel. I could only keep up with one or the other. Last week however, I went to the Learning in a 2.0 World in Maine. A few workshops and sessions featured presentations, streams, chats and of course hands on work. This time I kept my head above water, and I think I really learned some things. It does seem to get better and I am better able to attend to multiple channels of incoming information. The biggest challenge for me is still text vs. sound.

Anne Davis said...

I just want you to know that you did a great job as moderator and look, I have found your blog! :-)

I'm glad you are a part of the community! Let's keep in touch!

Best,
Anne