6.2 Powerful Learning, Powerful Leadership: Part 1

How do you model and explore new opportunities for learning in your own practice? 

At CMIT, our job is coordinating conferences and trainings. Because of this, we often have the opportunity to sit in on or go to conferences and trainings ourselves. This provides me with the ability to continually learn. I also enrolled in the ISDT program because I had the desire to add to my knowledge. In addition, I often read books or browse websites where I can get new and exciting information for my job. I like to think that by being excited to go to conferences, trainings and professional development and even go back to school, I'm modeling what it means to be a continual learner. I try to share the information I get from those activities with those around me and hope that they would do the same.

What opportunities are you providing for informal learning, exploration, and “play” with new technologies in your organization? 

I do not often have the opportunity to introduce applicable, new technology to people within my organization. I'm not in an educational environment, per se, and there are limited programs that apply to what we do - and we seem to have what we need to do what we need to do. There are some programs that I would love to see introduced here, but often they don't play well with the existing IT infrastructure, so they are not available. There have been opportunities for me to show others some shortcuts and tricks to using current technology. 

Once I am able to incorporate new technology and encourage others to play with it, I would host meeting to do so - giving a brief overview of the tech and then encouraging others to try it out. We could talk about how we could use it in our everyday work.

How do you move from “standardized” or “personalized” learning opportunities for your students and staff?

There is a temptation to keep things standardized because it is easier and, in some ways, cheaper than personalized learning. To create more personalized learning opportunities, it is important to let students be the driver of their own learning. They need to be in charge of what, when and how they learn. Not only does this provide the student with personalized learning experiences, but it also motivates them! Personally, I could encourage my learners to tell me what they need to learn and base my teaching on that instead of throwing a bunch of information at them that they may already know. 

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