A new year's wish for us all

In the constant discussions about resources available to us, we are missing critical input from the many wonderful educators that read posts often, but rarely share thoughts. The reality is, we have had materials and resources available for learning for centuries and with every generation there have been shifts and changes. The concern today is that the shifts in what is available and what our learners are facing are changing at a faster rate than at any time in history. As educators, we are not going to be able to stick to any one resource or method and remain effective or even relevant to our learners. We need to be able to share more with more people offering input, because we are the experts in our craft and each one of us can share so much. 

I wonder how we can best support our educators in getting more comfortable with the ever increasing rates of changes that continue to evolve daily. One thought is to help teachers build up a framework, lets say a tool box, of pedagogical diversity that can help individually assist the many types of individuals we meet. These educational tools, philosophies, methods and strategies can then be supplemented with resources (think of these as most anything we can pull in from Internet, classroom, or local areas) that enable learners to learn through safe, repetitive failures with reflection  and adaption being key between each attempt. In effect, we all need to learn so much more about coaching and we need to work together to share strategies that work well in particular situations and further we need to share resources that work best with different strategies we might employ. 

This is no small feat by any means, but there are so many talented individuals across this country! Many of them would love to help in these efforts, I think we are just missing the platform and protocols to get these efforts going in a way that is safe, semi consistent and productive for most. Our education staff is of course as diversified as our learners are, so it is a bit ironic that we might need a "one size fits all" framework to get everyone producing a support system that promotes effective meeting of individual learner needs. There are some great ideas formulating in pockets all over the country. It would be great to hear thoughts and experiences from any out there. 

How do we go about sharing how we might teach something effectively, but differently with each other? Would we simply have a forum to post by subject, lets take math for example? "In teaching quadratics, I struggle to find hands-on ways to build conceptual development for my learners that love to build stuff but struggle with formulas and symbols..."  Posts like this could then be answered by any in the field that have ideas or solutions that might have worked in other implementations. I know there have been attempts at this, maybe even within some LINCS forums, but there always seems to be few involved and the energy dies out. Still, if we hit on the right format, methods, access to accomplish a Q&A professional communication system, I think many of use could benefit from it. 

If/when we build our sharing capacities, then we can shift over to sharing of resources. We have two micro- groups starting up in the second week of January (more info hopefully will be posted in all forums next week) that will start exploring resources and how we might set up a framework for collecting and evaluating those resources to best determine how we might all share potential uses of the many great resources available. It would be great if we could start thinking of ways we could then start sharing/collecting/categorizing pedagogy ideas and needs to help enhance the resource work that will be done this spring. 

Again, there are some great things in motion and a wonderful energy is riding under the surface. It would be great to have our many lurkers (we know who you are ) start to share thoughts, ideas, concerns, challenges. We all have so much we can learn from each other, but if we rely on those few that push hard to post all the time to share their input, we miss out on such a huge wealth of experiences and information out there. Pick a forum, share an idea or respond to someone's post. We are all going to need each other to get comfy with providing input, so we all might want to take baby steps to get going. How about setting a goal for the month of January that you post a thought, idea, question, challenge, feelings or anything relevant to your educational world OR respond to posts others have put out there? Of course, you know you are cheating by posting something like, "Yea good idea, Ed" and calling that good . We are all pressed for time. If we can start carving out just half an hour a month to share our voices and thoughts, the positive energies in our field can reach unparalleled levels in times where we all face unparalleled challenges. Play this song and read the lyrics and see if your head or feet start moving by the end as you think about how wonderful our work really is and how much more success we can help our learners experience, if we can increase what we share with each other. 

I wish all of you a wonderful new year coming up and hope to hear more from you all soon!