No Borders Learning

 I am going to share what resonated the most in me from the Week 4 videos.

First I really like this visual as it encompasses the main ideas behind this IMMOOC and is a constant reminder about learners’ agency. It also reminds me that these things need to be experienced by educators first as they are the ones who need to then, take them to their learners.

Then, I loved to think about relationships (being a caring member of a community) and those relationships are between educators, between educators and learners and between learners. I would like to share Esther Wojcicki’s TRICK model as it resonates with me and this IMOOC:

Trust

Respect

Independance

Collaboration

Kindness

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/trick-in-education–trust_b_4161318

And Jennie Magiera’s short video on “Failure is the first step”

I have been fascinated by the book and the conversations on the videos. I do believe we MUST move from a spoon-feeding atmosphere as well and EMPOWER learners (including teachers).

It’s better to let students fail and bounce back (teach them grit and resilience by allowing them not to be perfect), it’s ok if the learning gets messy as making mistakes is an essential part to learn something new (if there is no mistake it’s because it’s already learnt, not that the person is talented). We have to ask ourselves: Do we allow students to be that baby with the spaghetti? or the one that is spoon-fed?

Being vulnerable is another theme that got be interested. About 2 years ago, I read this for the first time, I think on George Couros’ Blog and it spoke to me but was a BIG taboo! Now I am convinced that more and more people ACCEPTS this perception. After reading this, I changed my classroom communication. I realized that instead of feeling bad when I did not know an answer (which could make me uncomfortable because I would think that my students would doubt my capacities to teach them), I could be HONEST and LEARN ALONG and this TRANSPARENCY through VULNERABILITY changed my classroom.

About “Unleashing talents”, I would like to insist again on the importance of risks. We need to dare and take risks, not just once, but multiple times and allow ourselves to be ok with failure and BOUNCED BACK, ITERATE, try try try. In the process of trying, we MUST reflect to see what happened, “post-pare” and suggest something better the next day.

About successful learning:

I learn that a while ago but realize very often that my many of my colleagues are not aware of this: successful learning is not to get everyone at the same level BUT push each students so they reach their full potential. Learning is individual. That’s the reason schools fail at “teaching” groups because it’s not about “teaching” and especially not about “teaching a group the same thing at the same time” but “LETTING individual students  at their pace and take OWNERSHIP of their success at their level’.

Caleb Gattegno was and remains a huge source of inspiration, for example when he says that:

Communication is a miracle.

It’s not possible to communicate to a whole class and assume they all hear what we meant. Even in this IMMOOC, we are all interpreting and hearing different things. Hopefully not things totally unrelated! but our awareness diverges because of where we are HERE and NOW in our learning journey, in our mindset!

About my teachers 🙂

I like this simple yet POWERFUL idea that we should not be classroom teachers but school teachers! Let’s be open-minded (I do hate to hear, a division between primary and secondary sections in K12 schools!), we all are working together and are interconnected.

As an EdTech Coach, I really need to spend a lot of time to build relationships and trust with teachers, mingle, remain positive, encourage and try to help teachers understand their own purpose (in relation with our vision). In short, I need to DO what I PREACH!