Passion and PD

Mark over at Edtechlife has an interesting post based on what he wrote, that (edited here, thanks for the correction Mark) thanks to Sara Armstrong of OnCUE has Mark permission to repost. The quote has crystallized some of the thing that I’ve been thinking about in terms of teaching in general and the approach that we have taken in Education and the approach that I plan to take in Science. Similar to the “forgetting curve” post yesterday, it’s passion and application that seem to be ever so important in any manner of teaching or professional development. We all know that people who are forced to attend PD never get anything more than a pen out of the event, but those that are motivated, even though they haven’t gained anything practical have at the very least had their passion fueled. I think we’ve also seen how that if you are not really keen on teaching the topic in question, it’s not going to be as good as if you are really “into” it. Very much like how actors who aren’t “buying in” don’t really deliver well, when the instructor on stage doesn’t believe in what is being taught, the process is considerably more painful than it needs to be for everyone involved. Afterall, the greatest problem that we face is how to make our staff and students care at all about what they are teaching or being taught.

We also found that in TechPD, that one of the ways to get people comfortable with computing (as with my Comfortable Computing chapter and papers) that one of the easiest ways to get technology into the classroom, or into the lab is to get it used at home in some personal manner. Once people understand that technology is merely a tool, and increasingly one that creates artifacts that can be used and manipulated in a variety of ways, people really start seeing possibilities on their own.