I was recently reading a college oriented document about having a “personal brand,” and while it was aimed at undergraduates who may have little real-world experience to point to and may benefit from a personal message upon which to focus and highlight their lives in a concise and engaging way, I was intrigued.

I did not read this as an elevator speech, but rather as the little phrase (or tagline, subtitle, or caption) that appears at the top of most blogs. It includes interests, perhaps a value proposition, an idea of what I am passionate about, interests, and such.

I did some brainstorming, and found these common words (and threads):

• reflective practice
• critical thinking
• assumptions
• paradigms
• teaching
• learning
• postmodernism
• constructivism
• qualitative
• online
• community of practice

I wonder if it is time for me to revise mine?

Currently, I am using:

Reflective practice in organizational learning, educational technology, and postmodern society.

and I have been thinking about changing it to something more along the lines of:

Challenging assumptions to promote learning and teaching

or:

Challenging assumptions to construct postmodern learning

Now, it is time for some feedback and help with this. I am oftentimes surprised by who reads my blog, and invite some feedback and thoughts here. I have been tinkering with this idea for about four weeks, and now want to decide and have something new to live with and try out. Thoughts?

Tags: assumption, community of practice, constuctivism, critical thinking, learning, online, paradigm, postmodern, qualitative research, reflective practice, teaching

I often blog about adult and continuing education. Makes sense–I am a senior instructional designer, adjunct instructor at New York University, and organizational learning and communication consultant.

I live and breathe teaching and learning, and with many of my influences (Lyotard, Mezirow, Brookfield, and Denzin, among others) encouraging (critical) reflective practice, I tend to regularly toss ideas and experiences around in my mind for extended periods of time. This is after all the purpose (and by-line) of my blog Silence and Voice itself:

Reflective practice in organizational learning, educational technology, and postmodern society.

It was with some surprise to have Deb Peterson find something that piqued her interest and write about it on her About.com blog. She was very generous in her comments, and it certainly made my morning when I learned about it yesterday. It serves to remind me that we never know who finds our work online–colleagues, future colleagues, current / future / past students, clients, friends, and the like. Once our words are out there and shared online, then the public face we wear may show interesting signs of what it means to be a (critical) reflective practitioner. Sometimes it works well, and sometimes it may be more challenging.

With our world increasingly connected and decreasingly isolated, it is no wonder that George Siemens and Stephen Downes have been able to gather 1900+ of their closest friends (and a few colleagues as well) to discuss Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (cck08), which I think speaks nicely to this experience. Interesting how Deb’s comments about my work and thinking helps me to connect some online (and internal) dots. I suppose we never know when opportunities for reflective practice arise.

The world is getting smaller and more connected indeed . . . what an exciting present and future!

Tags: CCK08, reflective practice

I attended an online book discussion within my organization recently, and there was a very interesting question the class facilitator ended the session with. He asked:

If we were to write our own ideal job title, what would it be? 

I thought that was the grandest thought-provoking question I have encountered in some time, and came up with “Director of Strategic Reflection.”

As a proponent of reflective practice within an ongoing learning organization, I think those of us within human resource development, adult education, communication, and organizational development would greatly benefit from more active (both structured and unstructured) reflection. How else can we identify the assumptions and patterns of behavior that stifle us from moving forward to create a more just and aware organizational structure and society itself? We who engage in organizational, management, and leadership studies know that when people within an organization are more aligned within one another and with the mission and vision, then the organization itself is stronger and healthier.

What would your ideal job title be, and what impact would it have? 

Tags: Human Resource Development, organizational development, reflective practice

The New York Times had a recent article entitled Who Is the Walrus? that I have been thinking about and processing for the past few weeks. The more I reflect on it, the more I realize how assumptions quietly sneak back into preparation and delivery of teaching and learning with adults.

Now, I have worked in and around adult and organizational learning for most of my professional life, and every now and then something comes along to wake me up again to various assumptions and the like that I hold about learners. I know about andragogy, hegemony, postmodern paradigmatic structures, critical theory, and the like. I have studied all of these things and they have helped to transform my worldviews on teaching and learning.

Nevertheless, it is easy to fall back into the pre-learned status quo and teach as we learned. Enter, the walrus.

The article on walruses raised my thinking quit a bit, and I can’t help but think there is a lot here for us to learn about teaching and learning. So, what can walruses teach us? Here are three thoughts:

1. Big scary things aren’t always as they seem. Yes, walruses can way over 2000 pounds and can approach very quickly, but as the author learned they are not as intimidating as they appear. In fact, he learned they like to play, are highly social, and are so intelligent that scientists use the term “creative” when discussing walruses. They don’t quite charge–they come over to play and love to have their faces blown on. How easy it is to miss this because we can’t get past the size, tusks, and noise? How often do we do this with learners, perhaps because of their organizations, hair styles, or use of professional language? Throw in culture, history, and status (using whatever measure is at hand), and you get the picture?
2. Some things that appear mean are really only happy. It is easy to draw conclusions about the tusks and how the walruses bang into one another as if they are fighting. In reality, the tusks help them get onto the ice and out of the water. Fight? Walruses are so social and so like the company of other walruses that they climb all over one another, and if no walruses are around, will even seek out other moving objects (such as, sadly, a ship). Do we at times misunderstand what our learners want or have to offer, especially those who are (for whatever variety of reasons) different from us? Can we misinterpret their questions, as well as their learning needs, distractions, and levels of commitment to education they had no role in creating?
3. Noise to some can be considered singing to others. A male walrus can be heard from 10 miles away, and can sing in complex forms using all body parts for days at a time. This singing is for the female walrus who can, amazingly, seem to distinguish the love song through all the noise of all the other walruses. Not everybody likes opera or rap, but some people really get into one or the other (or even both). Things that may appear like a confused mess can really be complicated processing by learners (ever seen a Philip Glass opera?). Have we ever thought something was wrong or nonsensical because we don’t get it, though our learners fight to affirm their experiences (that we in turn can easily dismiss)? How often have we ever claimed (even internally) that we know our learner’s context better than they do, and then handily proceeded from there?

I am still considering how much I learned with this article and the next few weeks of attentive reflective practice. While my perceptions and appreciation of this wonderful animal has shifted and grown, I so very want to bring this into my professional and academic work. Failing to do so will leave me unable to reach out to my learners in ways they need. 

After all, learning is most valuable when we reach the learners where they are in and as themselves. 

Tags: reflective practice, walrus

The New York Times recently had an article on mindfulness meditation, which is a psychotherapeutic method that focuses on awareness and release of emotions. This is related to “just being,” rather than a focus on “doing” something active, so concepts and memories get ”reframed” so that a person can recall difficult situations and experiences and learn to endure them while coming from a place of peace and quiet. 

While this work comes out of the psychotherapy literature with a Buddhist twist, it reminds me in many ways of Reflective Practice. Donald Schon initiated this concept to mean “thoughtfully considering one’s own experiences in applying knowledge to practice while being coached by professionals in the discipline.” I am an adherent of this educational philosophy (as noted in my blog’s by-line), and regularly read the same-named journal and enjoyed the MIT course (available free online).

Aren’t these two similar, and perhaps related? Don’t I need to be quiet in order to reflect on and reframe my experiences into new next steps, ones that are better informed for having processed the initial occurrences themselves? Isn’t that what I do as an educator, to best meet the needs of my students? Isn’t that what is informing the new edupunk movement? Shouldn’t that help with the next presidential election, the rise in prices associated with fossil fuels, and even terrorism?

Once again, as what is becoming a mantra for me:  
There are no unrelated fields of study nor experiential horizons.

Tags: reflective practice

I was asked to consider this question:

Describe one of your own creative works and what you accomplished with it - then become your own critic and find out what you could have done better.

I looked at this question for some time, as I do not normally consider myself the most creative person. Knowing this is probably not the case, I am thinking about how I am often creative in my academic research, my professional work in instructional design and organizational consulting, my teaching, and here on my blog, the one public outlet for my creativity. 

I suppose one creative work is this very blog, as it has been ongoing since my first post on December 7, 2006. Hundreds of posts later, with my daily Tweets captured here as well, I can say that I am still capturing my daily thoughts and feelings and interests and sharing them with anybody and everybody online, whether they are interested in them or not. This blog becomes fertile ground for my experiment in reflective practice.

What can (could) I (have) do (done) better? I can censor myself less by writing in a manner that more closely resembles my spoken voice. There is little that is not public, and maintaining a personal blog is one way to own my (virtual) identity. I should probably write in my own voice more, as others who do so are quite refreshing. I think Twitter is helping with this. Restated a positive way, I can be more authentic and self-identified. Perhaps that is exactly what I am attempting with all the writing about liveblogging I have been doing? Perhaps that is why liveblogging is my next area of formal research? Perhaps autoethnographically studying my liveblogging I will learn something about media-supported live expression and self-narrative?

And I thought this question would be difficult to answer!

Tags: Autoethnography, Liveblogging, reflective practice

So, Northern Voice is finished. What to do with it now?

I think I will let my blogging tagline guide me for my next step as I begin my debrief:

Reflective practice in organizational learning, educational technology, and postmodern society.

Reflective Practice

I want, or rather need, to continue to reflect on my experiences. This reflection is critical to my learning. Writing new blog posts after having liveblogged every session I attended at nv08, Tweeting, and reviewing my Flickr photos to help me recall forgotten moments are all conscious choices I am making to foster my own grounding and creative development. So much content and experiences and learning so quickly was overwhelming. Strange how writing, even here, helps me to process it all.

Organizational Learning

I did not attend nv08 alone. I started to read more blogs and Tweets of people who I knew before the conference, as well as people I met while there. My FeedDemon feeds (kept current on my blog) have been working overtime, and I think that I will be adding to these in the coming week or so as I recall people who I wanted to follow but did not add them at the time.

Educational Technology

I learned edubloggers are more varied than I initially thought. For many years when I thought about edubloggers, K-12 jumped to my mind. Having met so many who teach adults, I felt more at home than I thought I would. I am actively demonstrating what I am learning via technology by committing to more actively comment than I have done in the past. I want to read and join in a community with others who have similar interests and skills and experiences and challenges. As writing helps me to learn, perhaps sharing this with others on their own social media outlets may engage others in conversation and continue the learning in new and exciting directions.

Postmodern Society

Is there a common Northern Voice attendee? Is there a common worldview there? Platform? Favorite technology? Coolest accessible app? Best approach to social media? What does it mean to have a “personal blogging and social media” conference in person at all, given the topic? Should there be a virtual conference mid-year to debrief, check-in, and prepare for the February event?

It feels liberating to consider NV within the context of my blog’s tagline. Hey, if it does not fit there, then the tagline needs to evolve. Glad to see the revised (current) one I developed a few weeks ago, after working on it for weeks, seems to be just right. For now, at least.

Technorati Tags: nv08,northernvoice,reflective practice

Tags: northernvoice, nv08, reflective practice

Wait.

Waiting.

Stay here and wait.

Go to lunch and then come back here to wait.

So are the challenges of being on jury duty for a second day.

So far they have kept us here without any new cases and, in fact, little indication of what to expect for the remainder of the day. This seems like it would be a wonderful activity for a contemplative or meditative sort, one who uses such times as opportunities to reflect and grow internally. I wonder if they ever considered yoga sessions here, since people have been surprisingly quiet.

Granted, I see myself as a reflective practitioner, both theoretically as well as practically. I like the act and reflect and revise and act cycle (which can also have evaluative elements, among others, included), but there is a limit to the amount of computer work I can do while using an insecure wifi connection that has been iffy at best today. Of course this could always be worse, and I did use lunch as an opportunity to eat in Little Italy today . . .

Ahh, there was just a call from a courtroom, so they will again shuffle our ballots (like shuffling cards, literally) and call a group of us.

I will hurry and post this and then continue to post, as possible, via Twitter. I have grown to like that microblogging moblog application!

Tags: Liveblogging, reflective practice

I just read a fascinating post from Richard Azia, where he described some of his thoughts having recently Tweeted 10,000 times (in under a year!). He had some really thoughtful reflections about Twitter as a truly social media. I commented on his page about this, sharing my own thoughts about why I started to Tweet more. To quote my own reply:

. . . I have started using it [Twitter] again a lot more because of 3 reasons–I have a BlackBerry and started using TwitterBerry, since it makes it easier to Tweet while on the run. Secondly, I find myself more open to sharing things in my day as my own public reflective practice (like autoethnographic and narrative studies). Thirdly, I recently switched my blog from MovableType to WordPress, and use Twitter Tools–this allows me to have my daily Twitter feeds get automatically added to my blog (so I do not lose my thoughts if Twitter decides it wants to become a walled garden).

I here so many people argue for or against Twitter, that is is nice to here somebody share a rather humble explanation of how they use it. I like to see such examples, especially after hearing all the arguments.  

Tags: Autoethnography, narrative, reflective practice, social media, Twitter, WordPress