Sit-and-Getters

Hi, I'm Amanda and I am not a sit-and-getter. (Hi Amanda)


I have not slowed down this summer, it has been a summer of learning. I have attended, participated, and presented at several different conferences this summer including the EngagEDnwi, ISTE2014, and EdcampHome. I have plans for a few more before the school year starts like the Leyden 1:1 Symposium, District 207 Summit, and the CPS Googlepalooza. Call me crazy, but I love learning!

As I was driving back from my most recent learning experience at SAMRi Summer Camp, a conference run by a group of classroom teachers from Downers Grove 58, I started to reflect on the morning there. I was able to attend four great sessions, and the reason they were so great was because I was able to participate in all of them. I realized that I am not good at a sit-and-get style of learning. I need to be an active participant. I need to be able to ask questions, make connections to my life and experiences, and share things that I have learned. I know that there are times that you have to be a sit-and-getter and that it is the only option for how to get a lot of information to a lot of people. It's not that I can't learn things from a lecture style presentation, because I can, it's more so that I learn better when I can be an active participant. That's one reason why twitter has been great for me at conferences, even if I'm sitting in a lecture session I can still backchannel with other attendees to be an active participant.

I have a funny feeling that I'm not the only one that's not a sit-and-getter. Are you? Are your students? I think it's so important that we don't expect our students to be sit-and-getters. We need to make sure as teachers that we are have our students actively engaged in the learning process. I love the idea of having students backchannel as well, although Twitter probably isn't the appropriate tool for them. At ISTE +Carlos Fernandez showed me his super awesome platform 81Dash that could be used for that purpose.

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