Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Learning to Learn

I've been thinking a lot lately about changing the way I deliver professional development. I really want to teach people, not just how to use a particular technology tool or piece of software, but also the skills to learn any technology tool or piece of software. Yesterday, while preparing for a workshop on podcasting, I came across this post Learning to Learn Software: Ten Heuristics, In it, Patrick Dickson shares some great ideas for how to go about learning new software.

I put together a few slides to try to illustrate visually the main points. I used them yesterday at the beginning of a training I was doing. It seemed to go over pretty well. So, in the spirit of learning new tools, I made my first VoiceThread using those slides. The pictures are of my son Ben and my daughter Abby (I particularly love the last picture of her). I think they did a great job of helping to illustrate my points.

Learning to Learn:

4 comments:

loonyhiker said...

Thanks for sharing that link. I will use that when I'm teaching my course this summer. I really like voicethread and the possibilities for using in the classroom. Your children are adorable too!

Anonymous said...

I love the Learning to Learn article. Will have to share that one. Thanks for posting.

Anonymous said...

I am collecting examples of how educators are using Voicethread in their classroom or for professional development on a wiki at: http://voicethread4education.wikispaces.com/

My plan is to share these examples with other technology teachers who provide professional development in their schools.

Feel free to add your own examples or links to resources. Thanks in advance,
Colette Cassinelli
http://www.edtechvision.org

Kymberli Mulford said...

Liz, what a wonderfully creative use of Voicethread to make a great set of points. Funny thing is... a frame or two into the Voicethread, I was thinking it was a great tool to encourage those "technophobes" we all know (and some of us love). But as you neared the end (Abby's face had me on the floor) I found that your audience was... ME! (Even after 10 years of being an ed tech coach!) I'm very frustrated by my first attempts to secure a (working) blog space and I needed your sweet children's faces to remind me that we will all get to that "good place on the other side" with a little determination. Thanks for making me smile tonight.