First let me write that I completely empathize with Lenora. Going to a Pro-D and coming away with ideas that just need to be tweaked “a little” can be a bit of a “hamster-wheel.” Let me give you an example.
When we were doing the rubric assignment for this course, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to sort of do a reverse questionnaire/process of elimination tool where it would lead BCcampus to the choice they needed for an LMS!?” [Note: what I was thinking were those polls that came up during the election, where your political-belief/allegiance would be revealed after a few answered questions]. I hurried over to Google Forms and started creating a questionnaire, then thought ‘wait! maybe, I should do this in Adobe Pro’, and then after an hour or so of making a nickel sized dent in an iceberg, I went off to prep for my real job of teaching the next day.
“Why,” you may ask, “is it always a story with you lady?” To which I will answer (to get us back on track) Lenora has a great idea. She is bursting with enthusiasm, and knows that this resource will potentially be really valuable. However, I think she needs to move this from “Me” to “We” (no © infringement intended). She has a huge resource pool of like-minded educators. Perhaps together they can develop a website with each of them tackling a part of the whole.
I believe there is good reason to pursue the website idea, and there are many options for sites that can be hosted (and self-help for creating) within the myriad of concerns and conditions that one would have for this type of site/scenario. However given the restrictions of her priorities, her internet access, and her unfamiliarity with the process, this endeavour may be best pursued and achieved with a team (but “posse” sounds much more “story”).
To quote the First People’s Principles of Learning: “Learning is holistic,” and “learning ultimately supports the well-being of the self, the family, the community.” (FNESC, 2015) Based on this, it would appear that for First Peoples, an issue such as bullying isn’t handled as a solitary element, nor with a solitary element (such as a website) but rather an opportunity for community to come together and practice ‘community.’ To accurately reflect on this scenario, one needs to remember the crucial piece that their community is based on interconnectedness and on relationship. The Lone Ranger motif is not a fit.
FNESC (2015). First peoples principles of learning. Retrieved from http://www.fnesc.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/PUB-LFP-POSTER-Principles-of-Learning-First-Peoples-poster-11×17.pdf
Keri,
Your post makes me smile (and since you understand the link between emotion and learning, you’ll understand how valuable that is). I hadn’t thought about the idea of Lenore approaching this as a group endeavour. Of course it makes so much sense! Not only is there potential for the multiples skills that a group of people could bring to the project, it also creates the potential for a better pro-d experience as 1) as the co-development of a site will be pro-d in many ways, and 2) the final project may be richer and have more access points for other colleagues. Ironically, this is the same premise behind the team development of a new FNESC/FNSA Science First Peoples resource guide coming out later this year – I just hadn’t thought about it in terms of this case study.
Now, you have me thinking about varying my approach for another project I am working on.
Thanks again,
Jo
Hi Keri,
I loved your inclusion of the community focus by FNESC at the end of your post. I agree that the community should be harnessed to help create this resource as it will be far more reflective of the group as a whole, and will probably be a resource that could apply to other bands, not just Lenora’s. This spreads the ideas from the “Me” to “We” as you suggested, and creates an online resource that could potentially host contributors from several different Aboriginal communities around the world.
Victoria
Hello Keri,
I love your idea of the survey and yes I too used the election survey, only to discover my closest political match didn’t have a candidate in my riding! All we can do is try. What I especially like about this idea is that sometimes in order to make a decision we do need to flip our thinking and start with the end in mind, even if we get so lost in the journey to the beginning that we never really connect to where we thought we would start. Learning is messy. I was tasked with the job of setting up blog spaces for our school who had never used them before. I started researching each option approved by our board, 5 different possibilities, and before long I could barely keep the features straight even with a chart. I ended up going back to what was the purpose of our blogs. From there I looked for the features that we would need to achieve our goals and contacted a tech specialist in our board. Together we determined which program most closely aligned with our needs. It really simplified the process.
Kim