A while back I posted on David Warlick’s article “Of Course I Think It Matters” about teachers needing to be lifelong learners. I found this quote in a later post ” Knowing how to do it — is not literacy! Knowing how to learn to do it — is literacy!”

Then I ran across this presentation by Stephen Downes and it resonated with a discussion we had this morning. You can see the presentation here. Some quotes that seemed to get to the heart of things were:

” 3 principles of effective e-learning
interaction – in a learning community (aka a community of practice)
usability – simplicity and consistancy
relevance (aka salience, that is, learning that is relevant to you , now)”

“place yourself, not the content at the center””Elements of usability :

Consistency…I know what to expect…

Simplicity…I understand how it works…”

“Don’t worry about remembering, worry about repeated exposure to good information”

“Information is a flow, not a collection of objects”

“To gain from self-directed learning you must be self-directed“

If we can make staff-development into self-directed learning and essentially self-development we will not have won a battle, we will have created change.

We need to change the perception through exposure to new ideas, look at it through a different perspective and pass that on, if we want to create a new paradigm and I think that is essentially what we are doing. It just seems slow sometimes.