books I like, connecting online, Learning Conversations, networks, pairadimes, Pro-D, reflection

A Whole New Book Club

Written by David Truss

Kelly Christopherson has put out an invitation to join a book club. For those of you who have not visited Kelly yet, his blog Educational Discourse is a blog from the trenches. He is a Principal who also teaches and coaches. Kelly’s blog posts are not only thoughtful and insightful, they are written with a personal touch… they have heart.

About the Book Club: We thought we would start with:

Kelly has suggested a wiki or a forum, or skype as examples of places we can meet and ‘chat’… who knows we could even meet in Second Life. These are only suggestions, we invite other ideas. The simple goal of this Book Club is to create a space where participants can get together and have a meaningful, enjoyable learning conversation.

As an example of how a Book Club can enrich the reading experience, A Whole New Mind introduces Six Senses, each with a working Portfolio. These portfolios all have website links to follow… wouldn’t it be great if 6 (or more) people each collected the links from just one chapter, explored them, and provided them on a wiki with comments as to what they thought about the sites they visited? I’d be far more likely to interact with others contributing this way, than to go to all these links on my own.

Bedtime Story by the Campfire- Oregon Coast, Summer 2005 Let one of us know if you are interested.

Originally posted: February 19th, 2007

Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:

We decided on a wiki, Kelly got it set up and I played with setting up the chapters for discussion. A few things happened, or rather didn’t happen, to make this far less successful that it could have been. I think the biggest flaw was that we never set any specific deadlines. Specifically we didn’t plan a live (online) discussion, or even an ‘end’ date to have things completed by. Essentially we didn’t build in the scaffolding and expectations that, as teachers, we all know is necessary to get a good project from students. Yes we are all adults, but we all have busy lives and I know that my commitment to the ‘project’ would have been far greater if I had specific deadlines to meet.

The more time I spend with web2.0 tools, and the more mainstream they become, it becomes blatantly obvious that good pedagogy and the creation of meaningful assignments that build on caring relationships is what really matters. The tool doesn’t matter… using it well does!