LearnHub

Glad you found it useful, Shouldice. I would love to look at your lesson…can’t find it here just searching. Would you post a link so we can all take a look easily?

Thanks for taking time to share what’s valuable to you about my lessons here, Eleonor! I’m really curious about where you are in your personal inquiry here at LearnHub… Would you have time to use the cognitive taxonomy circle to identify that for the two of us? Which of those activities in the inner circle are fueling most of your inquiry here right now? I’m guessing you’re mostly in the “apply” part of the pie right now… but what would YOU say?

Glad you found an immediate application, Shouldice! I find uses almost everyday for these distinctions. I just launched a new blog, by the way. If you’re interested in virtual meetings, you might take a peek: http://www.virtualmeetingcoach.com. I’d love to hear what you think about it!

My experience mirrors yours in the sense that I notice, too, that many people have “dropped the plot” of their lives. I haven’t dropped it, but I certainly took a sharp right turn three years ago on what looked like it was going to be a straightaway forever. Finding my bearings in this new landscape – both literal and metaphorical – has been quite an adventure. My online friends have helped me with in ways I could never have imagined. Nothing like the ways my local friends have helped! Some of the help has been delightful…some of it has been a little like your description of the James story. The mystery of becoming is no longer something I think I can “master.” I do my best to hold it in wonder…

I’m glad you’re joining in here at LearnHub, Geneven, and look forward to learning more with and from you!

Well, I guess no one feels a need to map this conversation, Geneven. It’s delightful to me that LearnHub sends me notice of everything people ARE responding to here so I can keep up with what happens when I start something… and others take it where they want to go with it.

I love your response here and share your love both of The Fifth Discipline and In Search of the Miraculous. This conversation has begun some great online friendships and nourished some that were already underway. The fact that you’re joining it now, fully 6 months after the last post, is remarkable and miraculous to me.

Over the course of this year, since some of us first signed up as Beta users, I have reoriented my whole idea about “note-taking,” especially as it relates to “acquiring” knowledge. Tools like this that allow us to interact and leave “tracks” which we can then come back to ONLINE later are changing the way I think. Sometimes I’m worried about that. I spent a long time creating my personal ways of thinking and learning… But these days, I’m getting more comfortable with the idea of “accessing” what I need to know when I need to know it. Like I’m doing right now… checking in on this conversation… For at least the last 90 days, I’ve “forgotten” I even started it while I’ve been focused on new learning and creating some new webs.

The fact that LearnHub is set up to “remind” me this is still a live conversation is stunning…

And I’m so glad you took time to contribute to it… Anything more you’d like to add knowing that someone’s listening?

I’m not clear about what you’re asking for, Elizabeth. Will you make your request again, using another way of asking? I’d be happy to share, but don’t get what you’re needing…

The longer I’m involved with Learn Hub, Shouldice, the more I see the truth of what you’re saying here. In a million years, when I posted this lesson last March, I would never have imagined there would have been 3028 page views, not to speak of all the comments that have accumulated. I think we’re evolving something truly new here online – a way of learning together that goes beyond what we used to think of as “lessons,” “discussions,” and “debates.” I continue to marvel at the way our thinking both accumulates and modulates…

I really appreciate you taking time to add your thoughts right now.

Precisely!!! I love how you said that, Shouldice “How will we ever find the brilliance that is hidden in our collective.:”

I share your sentiments about testing, Shouldice, and appreciate your doubts about using them as “rules.” The value of this list to me is the comprehensiveness of the research… as a basis for comparison with my own experience. Guess that makes me a good Buddhist (grin). Doubt everything is still my motto after 58 years.

Thanks for taking time to comment here!

I’ve had a very stimulating experience teaching and learning with others here. And, it’s taken a lot of time to keep up with the experience. Of late, I’ve been developing new web content that’s not related directly to what I was engaging with others around here and I’ve simply not had the time to keep up with BOTH. I wish there were 48 hours in ONE day, not two.

I would actually say that this has been one of the most interesting experiments/experiences I’ve had “social networking” over the last 12 months. There is a LOT going on here and the freeform way that the system allows people to post and interact with content has supported a lot of experimentation that I wouldn’t have attempted in other learning systems or other social networks.

I really appreciate you starting up this group, Karin. You’ve piqued my interested again…

I couldn’t agree more, Ellen!!! You’ve pointed out a critical component of teaching for a LIVING, not just a paycheck!

What do others think about this? And how are you managing the “free” part of your offerings, so that you don’t go broke?

Well, I’m not sure my experience mirrors yours, Ron. I’ve known a LOT of Republican teachers … and a lot of Democratic business people (including myself). I have seen the patterns you’re talking about and I agree there are two “cultures” at work, two sets of values… but I’m not sure that they’re connected to politics.

And, every teacher I know complains about money all the time… so if they’re working for “ideals,” how come they have the ideal that somehow they are more “noble” starving… or taking less than they’re worth? What’s ideal about teaching kids that people who nurture them are going to get less nurturing than they deserve?

Seems to me that kids (and other learners) learn by example, not by “words.”

And I hope BOTH of us don’t “kill the thread,” but if we do, that will be an interesting piece of information about who’s participating here, won’t it?

The quote comes from my 7 Places Report, Ron.

And…whether or not we “like” the future…as you say, it’s coming right at us.

Rising fuel costs and global warming are NOT going away. We’re not going to stop meeting face to face… but we MUST make some hard decisions about when and where and how it’s profitable to do so, without wrecking the Earth. Facts are still facts.

USAirways just pulled out of both of the airports that are within a 200 mile radius of my house because it’s no longer profitable for them to serve so many remote regions. It’s a good time for people to start thinking about what something like this MEANS. It’s only one tiny piece of the big picture…but the principle at work is going to go all the way down to the heart of what we call “public” education.

These facts are the reason I began my offerings here. I look forward to the continuing conversation…

My experience mirrors yours, Steve, in relation to teachers just not “seeing” many of the possibilities of teaching as a business. It is up to those of us who do, though, to move forward and share our experiences with each other. There’s a new piece in Forbes this month titled “Virtual Schools, Real Business” that’s a wake up call to teachers and parents and school administrators, alike. You might want to check it out online. I don’t have the link handy right now or I’d paste it here. Google the title and Forbes and you’ll find it.

The truth of the matter, whether people can see it yet or not, is that we’re going to be moving towards virtual schools more and more. And quickly… So whatever you can do to build your skills and understanding around relating DIRECTLY to learners ONLINE will be like gold to you in the coming years. Glad you’ve found this community! Please participate OUTLOUD. We’re all learning together here…

Thanks so much for taking time to post your experience and your thoughts, Ron. I’m glad to see you so active inside LearnHub and look forward to your first session using WiZiQ! Your dedication to classroom teaching under the kinds of circumstances you’re describing is admirable.

It sounds like you really want to be in a classroom … nothing else will satisfy you. So, it makes perfect sense that you would stay, even in circumstances like these you’re describing.

Others? What’s coming up for you?

I’m not sure the word “lesson” implies a teacher bestowing anything on anyone. I’ve learned many lessons as a self-directed learner (being both my own teacher and my own learner). I do, however, wish there were an easier way here to designate the middle and end of lessons…

All I can see to do in the current architecture is begin lessons… and then abandon them… or neglect them for long periods of time… This does seem to be more like the way “natural” learning occurs, but when I’m wanting to “accomplish” something, I enjoy having structures and time frames, however arbitrary they might be.

I also enjoy having a clear relationship with the “teacher” and a separate one with “peer learners”... but perhaps that’s all about habit, too.

LearnHub is making me question almost every learning and teaching habit I have. That’s one of the reasons I keep hanging around here…;-)

Thanks for the clarifying question, Gretchen! The distinction I’m wanting to make clearer is that as long as teachers think of ourselves as “production workers” who are paid a salary by schools or organizations of other kinds (business, nonprofit, etc.) to conduct live learning events for “students” whose presence generates the money to run the school (either from private tuition or taxes), teachers are focused on fulfilling the requirements for continued employment by schools. Learners may or may not want or need what is offered by the schools they attend… we are seeing more and more how they are choosing NOT to attend when they can opt out and get the “credential” they need another way.

It’s a very different thing to prepare and deliver learning products directly to learners who are actually looking for help learning specific skills and applying specific information to solve everyday problems they are encountering in their lives, n’est-ce-pas?

What an interesting observation about the “endless linearity” this kind of architecture is creating, Gretchen. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that you mention it, I experience this, too… I’ve been taking for granted that the architecture itself is creating kind of “threaded discussion” that goes on .. and on .. and on.. as long as people keep coming into LearnHub and discovering conversations they are interested in.

In the beginning (meaning back in March, around the beta launch), there were a lot fewer conversations and a lot more re-visiting of the same conversations by a core group of people. At this point, four months out, lessons AND discussions AND debates seem to me to be functioning more like standard asynchronous threaded discussions capable of including rich media … or blog postings that accrue in “topic areas” rather than under the original “author’s” name, the way blogs do.

Your question about where the lesson begins and ends is provocative… and I have no sense of certainty about how I would respond…

Very interested in hear what others think about this…

Thanks for taking time to post, Karin!! At least I know I’m not the only one…I’ve left messages in inboxes and here and elsewhere…I’ll be away for the next couple of days, so hopefully things will be straightened out soon…

Something very strange going on in my lesson editing window… can’t get the text editor. There’s a code-only tiny window down near the bottom left of the page…and I can’t get any input to take in the publish drop down. This is NEW. Until I tried to put these last three lessons up, everything was normal…

What do I do?