Friday, March 28, 2008

One sided conversations

I work as an instructional coach in schools all the time and love it. I pride myself in being able to listen to what teachers want and explore their needs. I'm a good listener (although I'm not sure my wife would say so). My frustration is that I'm doing all the talking in this conversation about developing math lessons.

I know that I haven't done a good job of advertising this project, or developing a consistent posting schedule, or lots of things but I'm still frustrated. I see people are coming to the blog and wiki, but they obviously aren't being pushed to add to the conversation.

I am enjoying being able to organize some of my thoughts and by publishing them I am creating a better understanding of my own thinking, and that is valuable. I am learning how to use the structures of wikis and blogs better; and understanding some of the pitfalls and just how big they can be (consistency, audience, strong thinking, etc.). It's been a good experience so far, but I'll be honest it is a little frustrating. I am getting tired of talking to myself.

I am going to make a concerted effort to increase my use and output on this project to see if it has any legs, but I have a concern that it won't take off. I'll be left with a good idea that I will need to reflect on, and analyze to learn what i need to do differently to make it more successful. I have this gut feeling that there is an audience for a project like this, but I haven't accessed it yet.

My plan for growth is to get a larger library of information posted, blog about it more consistently, reference it intentionally in my f2f work with teachers, explore for similar projects and add to their voices, and shoot a couple of twitter comments out to see if anyone else is interested.

This is a real interesting concept for me as a learner. I have lots of ideas. However, now that I'm not in a classroom to try them out everyday, see how things fit, and see how things morph into better ideas, I have no outlet for my creativity. That was the genesis of this little experiment, that and as a way of organizing my learning for my own thinking, but now it's gotten a little personal in that I'm out here and not sure if anyone is listening.

No comments: