“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.” --Thomas Pynchon
Prompt: What is connected learning, and what's in it for me?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have struggled for a week to figure out how I want to respond to this prompt. It combines one of my most favorite things in the history of the universe, connected learning, and one of my absolute least favorite. It's perfect, really, that most of my closest friends as teachers started their posts this week with some form of "I had to Google 'WIIFM.'"
I understand that part of the job of teachers/teacher-leaders is to be a salesperson, and "what's in it for me?" is one of the most common questions other adults ask about a new method, a new strategy, or new idea. But honestly? It's the worst possible question, and even worse, it counteracts the ethos of "connected learning."
Connected learning is about sharing. It's about giving freely of yourself and your work and your time and your ideas. I have learned this from a national group of teachers (links in the sidebar), all of whom are relentless about giving their work away in order to help other teachers reach more students, and who are just as relentless about sharing and deflecting credit for their great ideas.
And it's the "giving freely" part, the part that I hold most dear, that makes "what's in it for me?" stick in my throat. I guess it's also the answer to that awful question: what's in it for us is that we get to be part of an incredible community, one where ideas are shared willingly and freely, and a community in which people care about each other, even over the many #TwitterMiles. Our students benefit from both the affirmations and the critiques, and it is SO fundamentally important to teach them to connect, especially in a world where face to face interactions are becoming more rare.
I just hope to teach them the folly in asking things like WIIFM.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have struggled for a week to figure out how I want to respond to this prompt. It combines one of my most favorite things in the history of the universe, connected learning, and one of my absolute least favorite. It's perfect, really, that most of my closest friends as teachers started their posts this week with some form of "I had to Google 'WIIFM.'"
I understand that part of the job of teachers/teacher-leaders is to be a salesperson, and "what's in it for me?" is one of the most common questions other adults ask about a new method, a new strategy, or new idea. But honestly? It's the worst possible question, and even worse, it counteracts the ethos of "connected learning."
Connected learning is about sharing. It's about giving freely of yourself and your work and your time and your ideas. I have learned this from a national group of teachers (links in the sidebar), all of whom are relentless about giving their work away in order to help other teachers reach more students, and who are just as relentless about sharing and deflecting credit for their great ideas.
And it's the "giving freely" part, the part that I hold most dear, that makes "what's in it for me?" stick in my throat. I guess it's also the answer to that awful question: what's in it for us is that we get to be part of an incredible community, one where ideas are shared willingly and freely, and a community in which people care about each other, even over the many #TwitterMiles. Our students benefit from both the affirmations and the critiques, and it is SO fundamentally important to teach them to connect, especially in a world where face to face interactions are becoming more rare.
I just hope to teach them the folly in asking things like WIIFM.
RSS Feed
