{"id":70,"date":"2008-01-20T16:06:11","date_gmt":"2008-01-20T16:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=70"},"modified":"2008-01-20T16:06:11","modified_gmt":"2008-01-20T16:06:11","slug":"willing-to-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/willing-to-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Willing to Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent some time Friday assisting a faculty member with Moodle. She’s a refugee from ETUDES (the legacy version of which is being retired), and wasn’t inclined to use Blackboard. We worked together for awhile, and she caught on to everything so quickly and asked great questions. She is not, for the record, what we would call a “digital native”.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I have worked with a number of faculty. At this point in my career, I have what Chip and Dan Heath call “The Curse of Knowledge” in their book Made to Stick<\/a>. I sometimes cannot remember what it was like not<\/i> to know something. For this reason, most of the Program for Online Teaching<\/a>‘s basic workshops are taught by faculty other than myself, and I particularly encourage those who have only taught online for a year or two to facilitate workshops with newbies.<\/p>\n

<\/a>What occurred to me today was that there is a direct correlation between a faculty member’s willingness to play with the system, and the ease of helping them. Folks who are not afraid to experiment in the CMS, make a mistake, try out some things, and figure out how to undo them, are much, much easier to work with. That was certainly true today. This faculty member had already tried to do the things she was asking me about, so she knew exactly what wasn’t happening like she wanted it to, and what questions to ask.<\/p>\n

Conversely, in my experience, individuals who are not experimental are hard to teach. They tend to ask questions that call for only one answer, and cannot mentally follow suggested options that might work better with their pedagogy. This is analogous to the issues we have with our students. Those who are open-minded and willing to play with ideas are easier and more energizing to teach. I want to encourage people to give things a try, and I’ve found myself saying “when you go play with this, you’ll see…” a lot.<\/p>\n

In my Moodle workshop this week, for which I only had one hour, I made time to experiment. I did prepare a short presentation about the reasons I like the system, with examples projected on the screen. But at each of 10 computer stations I had created a blank Moodle course, each logged in with a separate Teacher account (teachera, teacherb, etc.). Participants could play as I presented. A number of participants did multi-task this way, trying things as we went along. Those folks seemed to get a lot more out of the workshop.<\/p>\n

In the classroom and professional development, play has been underrated. Despite new ways of doing things (constructivism, discovery learning, inquiry-based learning), most instructors continue to use presentation as their primary mode both in traditional classes and online. But presentation makes the student or trainee, if not passive, accustomed to not being able to play. Even a little interactivity (a Moodle lesson, javascript quiz, click on the x) can encourage some interactivity, which might encourage some playing. In my first online exercise for students, I want them to post their profile image to Moodle, but I don’t tell them how. I ask “who can figure out how to do this? post and tell us how!” And they do.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that’s why, although I don’t peddle constructivism to those who aren’t ready (for example, I’m not!), I do encourage greater interactivity. Let’s play!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent some time Friday assisting a faculty member with Moodle. She’s a refugee from ETUDES (the legacy version of which is being retired), and wasn’t inclined to use Blackboard. We worked together for awhile, and she caught on to everything so quickly and asked great questions. She is not, for the record, what we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interactivity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}