Engagement, responsibility and trust

A few weeks ago I was on a panel for a Connected Learning webinar with Howard Rheingold:  Social Media and Peer Learning: From Mediated Pedagogy to Peeragogy.

Webinar archive here…

Early on, Howard talked about the idea that responsibility and trust work together. This is something I’ve been saying for a while. Here’s a graphic that I frequently use in my talks.

empowerment cycle
Feel free to use — with credit!

All these things are interrelated. I think we completely miss the boat when we talk about Digital Citizenship. Mostly it’s about rules and things students shouldn’t do. The word citizenship is such a good clue – it’s about belonging to something bigger than yourself. Engagement is part of that.

You often hear people talk about how technology is so “engaging” for kids. But that misses the point. It’s not the technology that’s engaging, it’s the opportunity to use technology to create something that is valued by the community and by yourself. Yes, a new device can be entertaining for a while, but when the novelty value wears off, what are you left with?

Engagement is not a goal, it’s an outcome of students (or anyone) doing meaningful work. Meaningful to themselves AND to the community they are in. Meaningful because someone trusted them to do something good and they shouldered the responsibility. Engagement is not something you DO to kids or you GIVE kids, it’s the outcome of this cycle of experiences.

Howard was talking about giving students in graduate school the responsibility to be co-creators of learning, the trust that that engenders, and the engagement and empowerment that ensues.

I think this can (and should) happen in K-12 education as well.

Sylvia

Social media and peer learning

Here is the archive of the Connected Learning webinar I participated in recently.

Social Media and Peer Learning: From Mediated Pedagogy to Peeragogy
Discover how giving students more responsibility in shaping their own curriculum can lead to more active participation.

This was a really interesting experience. The panel, moderator, and main speaker Howard Rheingold all convened in a Google Hangout. The Google Hangout is very good for groups and it was easy to have a very natural conversation. There was also a livestream and a moderated chat so that questions were coming in from the virtual audience.

You can watch the video, and read the PDF capture of the online chat here.

Even though Howard Rheingold opened the session talking about college-age leaners, I connected with many of his thoughts about how to create open-ended classrooms where the students co-create the learning. In my experience in K-12, it’s very similar as you figure out how to be a learner and/or a teacher in these kinds of situations.

I’ll write more later to expand on some of the points made in this webinar, but for now, I hope you enjoy watching the recorded video!

Sylvia

 

Free webinar – Social Media and Peer Learning

Social Media and Peer Learning: From Mediated Pedagogy to Peeragogy
Discover how giving students more responsibility in shaping their own curriculum can lead to more active participation.

I’m going to be on the panel for this webinar from Connected Learning, moderated by Howard Rheingold and Mimi Ito. I hope you can join us for a lively conversation!

When: Tuesday, April 10, 9AM Pacific (find the time in your time zone)

Howard Rheingold is the author of Tools for ThoughtThe Virtual CommunitySmart MobsNet Smart and teaches at Stanford University, Communication Department. Mimi Ito is  the author of Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out and a cultural anthropologist of technology use, focusing on children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications.

UPDATEWebinar archive here…

I’m excited! See you there –

Sylvia