Open Thinkering

Menu

Month: May 2010

My bMoble TeachMeet presentation

Sometimes you have to push yourself a bit and raise the bar. I spent a good deal of time preparing for the TeachMeet attached to the bMoble Conference last week so that I could use the Lessig Method to talk for 7 minutes on Everything I Know About E-Learning.

Here’s how it went:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbueYqgBhVw&w=640&h=385]

OK, so I ran over a bit. But no-one threw James Langley’s ‘Twitter pants’ at me. So that’s alright. :-p

Twitter is not the best CPD you’ve ever received.

I see this a lot:

  1. Someone is demoing Twitter.
  2. They ask their network why they use Twitter.
  3. People respond “it’s the best CPD I’ve ever received”

No. It’s. Not.

It might be the best Continual Professional Stimulation (CPS) you’ve ever received but development is more than getting a bunch of ideas. Development is:

[The] act of improving by expanding or enlarging or refining.

or

[A] process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage (especially a more advanced or mature stage).

That’s why TeachMeets, for example, are better CPD for those who present at them than for those who attend. Those who merely read tweets or attend TeachMeets are being professionally stimulated but not (necessarily) developed.

Happily, many of those who experience CPS end up undergoing CPD as they put those ideas into practice, reflect on it (via their blog, TeachMeet, etc.) and then make it better.

That’s development.

That’s CPD.

That’s all. 🙂

Image CC BY-NC TarikB

css.php