Last Saturday marked the 2nd TEDxKitchenerED at the Centre for International Governance Innovation downtown. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to share the stage with some very amazing folks from across Ontario. Check out the speaker line-up here.
During intermission, I had an interesting conversation with Jamie Weir, Will Gourley and Dina Pestonji about workflow. Will admitted to writing a script, practising in front of his wife and rehearsing like we all do. I admitted that my slides were my script, hoping to be somewhat natural in my talk. Dina admitted to practicing several times by herself. At which point Jamie asked us about the Writing Process in our classrooms. I pride myself on offering student choice but something about her comment struck a chord. Sure, I can provide different graphic organizers, different concept maps, etc. but is that truly student choice? Acknowledging the different TEDx Talk workflow we had admitted, I thought long on my drive home about the Writing Process at school. Concept map, graphic organizer, rough draft, edit, revise publish. Sure different writing topics, but the process? Everyone the same.
Subsequently I was trolling #satchat on Sunday and noticed an interesting tweet from Will Richardson.
All productive learning is personal: you control the “what.” Most “personalized” lrng is only about choosing the “how” @StJMagistra #satchat
— Will Richardson (@willrich45) May 14, 2016
Personalized learning is more than just ‘topic’ and different graphic organizers won’t accomplish anything for the student who doesn’t like graphic organizers. While I encourage students to write about their passions, the process in which it is done is far too similar to be anything but personal. I have some work to do.
Jamie, Will and Dina, your ideas are definitely worth spreading!
