RE: Collaborative Learning

My cousin, Dear MYRTLE, just posted this article: Collaborative Learning

Please drop by and read it. Having followed Myrt for a number of years, through PodCasts, your Blog, her Webinar’s, and “in person”, I do understand and see what she has described. We collaborated in a workshop last spring that didn’t mention that term, but in fact did collaborate in the presentation.

One of the best examples of Collaboration was the series in Second Life on “Inferential Genealogy” by Dr. Tom Jones, CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA. As wanna-be family historian, that term was was not on my list of terms. But the Just Genealogist in Second Life studied this process. It was more then a lecture, we “got” involved with the process and collaborated in making that “concept” real to each of us. It was the Dialog that got us started, but then try that concept out and make it real.

I posted a number of Blog posts that discussed that concept. As a follow up, I attended a seminar where Dr. Jones did a couple of presentations. Listening to his presentations helped fill in some of the gaps in what I had learned in Second Life, through the questions and side conversations during the presentations. We were able to share what we had learned, and through the dialog took the concepts he was presenting and made them real, based on our own experience.

Perhaps it’s like taking the Lecture into the Lab to try some of the concepts out.

I recently gave a presentation to a local family history group on how to search. Almost monthly, someone is presenting the results of their searching, several explain how and and where to search and present results. For this presentation, I did my best to put down the presentation and do some live online searching.

Two examples were walked through, showing some search techniques, results, showed what was and what isn’t Online, with a specific Question to resolve. Then a third “problem” was presented, and the class had to tell me how to search and where to search. At the “end of the day” the “class” collaborated and was able to provide guidance to the person presenting the problem.

The “Class”, each had their own searching experience, helped each other to come to the conclusion. From where I stood, it was the collaboration of the group that was able to show the “next step”.

Will I stop using the Presentation way to sharing? probably not, but I did experience what the collaboration of a group of folks can do Will this work for all presentations, no. I am trying to learn to provide less content and leave more time for discussion / collaboration surrounding the topic.