Ah yes Graham, I share your.. story.
As Alahka puts it in your comments, you can lead a horse to water… or as I have exhaled from time to time, flogging the dead horse that died in the trough!
I think though, it is incentives and time we need to encourage and support those teachers to first use the tools for their own learning. If they can’t do that, then I’m not sure we should be risking their incompetence on the lives of others who are either coerced into their charge, or pay huge fees for their services.
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December 23, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Graham Wegner
Leigh, I hope you checked the link back to Ken’s original piece of “fiction” that got me started – pretty universal story, I’d say.
December 30, 2007 at 9:41 am
hillarypjenkins
As always eloquent Leigh (the dead horse thing). Maybe its about acknowledging time commitments, using incentives (carrots are good), building interest and providing examples of benefits, to encourage, motivate and hopefully lead those wonderfully revitalised (after a holiday)horses to the trough and then they can inturn do this for students.
Look forward to working with you this year. I prefer chocolate carrots thanks.
December 30, 2007 at 9:50 am
leighblackall
Hi Hillary, well the dead horse thing excludes you of course 🙂 and yes, incentives are what we need. In the dead horse post, I finished off with an idea for incentives.. in short:
1. $200 per month bonus to every staff member who regularly maintains a blog for their work. In it should at least contain notes and reflections on training sessions and other learning, issues and concerns, ideas and solutions, links to resources etc.
2. The money for this come from a fraction of the formal training budget. Call it small money for big informal learning.
3. Coupled to this incentive are efforts to forge communicative networks between these blogs. Support agents who monitor the blogging and make introductions to emergent synergies.
Also, regarding the work we are doing with your staff (to which dead horse also does not apply 🙂 what do you think of the ideas, Out From Under the Umbrellas, and What Would it be Like to be the Rain? Do you think these ideas are too much, taking it too far, expecting too much of people?