Sarah’s Blog is about …

I spent Monday evening and most of Tuesday at Brunel University with a group of colleagues from schools, HE, DCFS, GTCE and a variety of other educational organizations, looking at Web 2.0 tools and discussing them in the the context of teacher professional development. I offer this posting as a summary for those on the day who wanted to have something tangible to walk away with and for anyone else swinging by who might be interested.

I had been asked to present on Moderation (in 5 minutes max!) - a term which does not work for me in the context of Web 2.0 and online learning environments. Why? Well for me terms like coach, mentor, moderator, tutor, teacher all give an underpinning philosophy of heirarchy and control. For me the word that works best, is Facilitator and in the context of this environment, ‘Online Facilitator’. Why? Because for me this term is more about empowerment and enablement. It comes from a premise of non heirarchical control. The online facilitator is not necessarily the expert and is just as likely to be learning along side that of the participants using Web 2.0 online environments.

I went on to discuss key facets of online learning environments, which can be losely grouped under several headings - from Pariticipation to Tools to Environment to Success. Themes running through all of these areas are Time (or Attention), Negotiation, Purpose and Motivation. The 5 minute presentation was based on a paper I presented at the Virtual Communities Conference in the Hague back in 2004. Most of what I introduced to the group, for some I’m sure it was not new, is covered in our course Online Facilitation, which we host via our Know How website. For more details, please take a look or contact me directly.

You might also be interested in seeing my other CORE Education colleagues presentations here:

Malcolm Moss - A Unified Model for Teacher Centred Professional Teaching and Learning Development

Richard Millwood - How Should We Conceptualize CPD?

Tags:   Learning Technologists · Life Long Learning · Online Facilitation · Professional DevelopmentNo Comments