Another Resolution: Making my Pedagogy As Well as My Courses Visible

Posted on January 12, 2007 by Barbara

mildweedsilk
Inspiring, inspired work: Henry Jenkins today decribes his January course at MIT. These are the kinds of posts we need from one another as we try to build sound, effective practices in our classrooms–this is the kind of individual contribution to knowledge spaces that leads to powerful collective intelligence (as opposed to what Kathy Sierra’ describes as the “Dumbness of Crowds”)–indeed, M.I.T.’s open courseware exemplifies opening the doors of education to anyone with internet access.

Of especial interest to me is this excerpt from his section, “Educational Goals”:

This workshop emerged from a series of conversations that Henry Jenkins and Alex Chisholm had with more than 50 different companies, large and small, which might be interested in hiring Humanities-trained media studies students upon their graduation. We were consistently told that while Liberal Arts students are highly desired by employers because of their mental flexibility and breadth of background knowledge, they often lacked some core skills that would make them ideal employees. Among those things most often identified were leadership experience, teamwork, communication skills, brainstorming and problem solving skills, competitiveness, and the experience of carrying a project through to completion. So, one important thrust of the workshop was to give our own graduate and undergraduate students training and experience in these areas.

Sounds much like what Ken Robinson says in his TED talk, Creativity and Education” and in his book, Out of Our Minds, Learning To Be Creative which I’ve blogged about here.

And so, this spring I plan to link my blog-based courses to pages outlining my educational goals, methodology, reflections on outcomes, set-up considerations, etc. as a way both to contribute in my own small way to the growing body of online resources for teachers and learners and to reflect on and assess my practices. Learning from such teachers as Henry Jenkins, I will look for ways to enhance my students’ “leadership experience, teamwork, communication skills, brainstorming and problem solving skills, competitiveness, and the experience of carrying a project through to completion.” Yes, in the writing classroom.

Advertisement

Filed under: Classroom Blogging, community, Discoveries in the Blogging World, Insights into New Media in the Classroom, Teaching and Learning | 8 Comments »