Habits of Mind: Millennial Learner or ADD?

So, I’ve noticed something very interesting. This Educause conference focus is on “Interaction, Ideas, Inspiration”, but while there have been plenty of ideas bandied about and certainly some inspiration has wafted my way, I find the “Interaction” aspect seriously lacking. Now, I understand that the unspoken intent is that we are talking about interaction in our classrooms, but how is a professional conference not a learning event?

Perhaps the fault is my own.

You see, even during the more engaging sessions, I find myself blogging and tweeting, checking email (my phone buzzes every few minutes, it seems), IM-ing with colleagues back on campus, not to mention personal web surfing. Somewhere along the way, my attention span seems to have dwindled to that of my students’- if I’m not multitasking then I’m bored (and sometimes even then).

It’s entirely possible that I am misremembering the past- I’m sure that there were seminar classes in graduate school that seemed to drag on forever. It may also have to do with the changing nature of technology and my role- I spend my time in small portions covering multiple subjects as time allows; I rarely have an entire hour to focus on one project or issue.

Is this an advantage or a disadvantage?

I could argue that it gives me an insight into the student experience that I may be able to convey to their instructors- but I’m not sure that those instructors would acknowledge any advantage. So much of our teaching environment is still centered on students focusing on a single project over long periods of time (for a college freshman, 50 minutes is a long time). More and more subject areas have group work and some interaction, but I know of few truly student-centered learning opportunities (hopefully there are lots out there that I don’t know of).

I know, at least for me, this divided focus *feels* like a disadvantage. Perhaps because I still have previous expectations of “appropriate” student behavior.

Well, that didn’t take long…

…for me to fall off the blogging bandwagon, now did it? It is certainly one of those cases where no news is *not* good news, sadly. I have several articles in different stages of completeness that I hope to flesh out and post, but life and work is, well, life and work. I am still looking and reading when I have the opportunity, and updating links and blogs as i find them useful. Don’t give up on me yet!

The Tao of Blogging

The prerequisite “blog about the blogging experience”…

First off, no, I do not intend to maintain the rate I had last week- I just had a backlog in my head and it’s taking a while to catch up. That said, how often I post will be directly relational to how much time life allows me to evaluate and introspect. I tentatively plan to post something significant at a minimum every other week (this post doesn’t count, heh). I’m hoping that’s a realistic expectation, but time will tell.

Basically, I think keeping this as an open playground to test things out and decide whether they are useful or not is the way to go. That said, if something goes away that’s useful for YOU, please let me know. Conversely, if something appears to suck massively, please tell why you think so- constructive criticism will be considered. Non-constructive criticism will be dealt with as it should. ;}

Mostly, I think right now that I’m still in the “sponge” stage- poring through data and soaking up info. I’ve fallen out of the loop on some things, and on other things I was never in the loop in the first place. This eclectic sampling is opening up some interesting questions for me though, and I suspect that getting back in the habit of research will come in handy when I go for my next degree- what degree I’m not entirely sure yet, but an MA in Instructional Design currently looks appealing. That may change, however.

I’m also hoping this blog will help fill a personal need for professional development- after 2 years at UCF in EdTech I foolishly thought we would be past various technological challenges so that I could include focus on assessment and development. Ha! After 10 years in this field, I should know better, right? And there’s nothing like managing a service desk (of any size) to keep you running from fire to fire, until the end of day when you end up in bed with a bottle of Maalox and a countdown calendar to your next vacation. Like a few other things in life, I recently realized that the time won’t make itself, and if I wait until a good time it will never happen. So yeah, there it is.