Let them learn!

Ah the angst! You present, you want people to learn what you have to offer but are you really ready to let them learn in the way that best suits them?

You are thrilled to be acknowledged as an expert in your area but worried that someone may steal your ideas. When you present whether to a conference, a meeting or in any circumstance, you are sharing the ideas and the knowledge you have so that others may benefit by learning from you.

Why are you afraid if someone takes photos of your slides? It's the detail and the expertise you have to offer they will benefit from, not your pretty pictures. Oh no! there's no inspiring images, it is all text and screen dumps - ah, that was how the teacher did it back in school all those years ago. Text heavy presentations invite photography. How else will the learner get to note down all those points you've decided are so important they must be listed? Remember the scramble to copy everything from the blackboard (whiteboard) before the end of class back in school or university days.

Have you provided a place where the audience can retrieve the links you've provided? How will  they remember the long name of that fabulous site or organisation you just mentioned,  - snap, a quick photo will do it. Is it really a surprise that the person who has paid to attend your presentation needs more than the memory of your words to take away, to revisit and learn? If they are busy trying to copy everything from your slides, are they getting the best from your talk?

How do you learn best? Are you a visual learner? Does audio suit you better? Have you supplied the attendee with online notes/slides so they can concentrate on your message? Have you given them notes at the beginning of the presentation? Will the presentation that they have paid for, be accessible?

If not - expect participants to take photos, expect folks to use every means at their disposal to capture the information being presented. Why not share? It is sure to generate more interest and if your presentation was sooo.... good, of course you'll do it again and again, and by the next time you'll have new up-to-date information to add - the slides will be outdated or at least outmoded.

Get your Creative Commons licence here Explain it to your audience too so they understand their rights and responsibilities.

Display a QR code that leads to your slides right at the beginning of your presentation and allow time for participants to scan it. Now they will have your slides on their phone or tablet and need not interrupt you or their neighbours by trying to get a shot of every slide.

One day:

• you will be too old or infirm to present
• the information you have to share will be outdated - let people make good use of it now.

Check up on what you agreed to do. The audience are clients, are you not bound to provide them with best learning experience possible?

I've written this post in response to so many negative things written about participants by some presenters after RootsTech, a large genealogy conference in the USA.  No, I did not attend - out of my budget range, but I learn so much from the caring souls who share their content online. It seems many conference participants were using their phones to photograph slides - it may be that some presenters had not given their audience a variety of other options to access the content. My genimate Jill has also addressed this issue which has prompted me to revisit this post.

I respect copyright and acknowledge sources but thank the YouTubers, the slidesharers, the Facebookers, the edTechers (yes often teachers) bloggers, webinaries, screencasters, geniesharers and too many more to mention. I've learnt and continue to learn from your visuals, audio and text.

All content, your presentations and mine are built on previous knowledge. Where did we get that from? We read, we learnt, we watched, we absorbed, we processed, we were inspired and sometimes we came up with an original idea. Our knowledge is built on the foundations provided by others. We adapt, add to and remix just as suggested in the creative commons licences. Help others learn with your visuals and text.

Slideshare, Dropbox, Box, Google docs and slides, YouTube, blogs and more. There are dozens of ways you can share your content online. Excellent examples of sharing using both paid and freemium models are Thomas MacEntee, Richard Byrne and Lisa Louise Cooke to name but a few. What are you waiting for? Times have changed!



Library Currants by Carmel Galvin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

100 years of learning

This week I had the wonderful opportunity to celebrate my mother's 100th birthday with her and each of my six siblings, their partners and my husband. It was a special family occasion and a tribute to her in so many ways. The 15 of us lunched in a lounge room in the small country hospital in South Australia where she has been resident for the last seven and a half years. 
Here's a woman who left school at the end of primary school as there was no money for her to continue into secondary years so she needed to go out to work. She still had a burning desire to learn and never ceased to do so. She and my father struggled through a tough farm existence but she always valued 'learning' of any sort and encouraged us to always try and do our best.

One of her favourite mottos has been "if a job is worth doing then its worth doing well." This applied equally to her care of family, attitude to tasks and of course, learning.

Thank you Mum for so much, for your positive outlook on life and for the opportunities you provided for me which required great sacrifices made by both you and Dad.

Today many of her 27 grandchildren and 29 great grandchildren will call to see her. May they and all of us open our minds to the possibilities and enrichment that continual learning provides.

Learning highlights in 2010

Learning from colleagues

During the last year I have had the privilege of learning from colleagues from all over the world through the power of Twitter. Closer to home my colleagues continue to provide support and the opportunity to discuss new developments. I’ve been privileged to have a practice teacher working with our library staff for the last 4 weeks and her fresh ideas have caused me to revisit this dormant blog as well as examine some library practices.

Points to revisit and emphasise for the new school year in January

• Student learning comes first - library tasks facilitate learning
• Model lessons with the emphasis on developing students’ thinking skills for other staff
• Prioritise tasks within the library
• Allocate tasks and meet regularly to review task completion

IPad project

During the last month my school has issued iPads to 198 Year 12 students and about 80 staff. The process of getting there has kept both the IT team and our steering committee very busy. Students have rapidly adopted their new tool into everyday classes. Some very enthusiastic staff have made the most of this opportunity with the boys, and collaborative learning between staff and students has improved.

Planning such an implementation requires much time and infrastructure. My brief outline of the process can be found at iPad: Idea to Implementation. 

The long summer break will provide time for staff to become as proficient as students in their use of this great new tool. I look forward to continuing to provide ongoing support for both staff and students when and where needed.