My learning goal for this class is to explore some ways that media and technology can be used to encourage learning communities. This fits under goal 1e familiar with a variety of ways of supporting, facilitating and trouble-shooting learning communities.
This past year, my partner pastor and I led a group on a Walk Through the New Testament where we had a group of people reading New Testament texts daily from January through the end of May. If they followed the plan, they would have read the entire New Testament in that timeframe. As we led the class, we found that we needed several ways of including people in the process. As a result, we had a Facebook page, we put the handouts on the church webpage, we met face-to-face every other week for question-and-answer, and we participated in the online webcast of Dr. Matthew Skinner’s Walk Through the New Testament class. Different members took part in the different learning communities, and some members chose to just follow the plan on their own without any outside support from us.
I would like to explore the how technology can open up new ways for the members to engage in learning communities in the church.
Sarah-
ReplyDeleteYou pose a great learning goal, how can we engage and encourage learning communities through media and technology. With all the social media tools available, it seems like this would not be a difficult process. But, because there is no one absolute way people connect (different media platforms, non-media platforms, etc..) it makes it difficult to find a one-way fix to the problem of group collaboration. Some use email, some don't. Some people use Facebook or MySpace, some don't. Some use texting, some don't. As group leaders, the question becomes, how are we going to reach all the members of our learning community in an efficient and effective manner? We do not want to be spending all our time putting multiple forms of communication together, yet we want to make sure all our reached. This will be our struggle going foward I believe.
Thanks
Nate
Nate, I completely agree. It will be easier for people to get the information we are putting out there, but harder for us to get it out there. I tried to contact the 9 girls in my confirmation small group this year by email. It was a huge failure. It was information that was more than I could put in a text, but I couldn't get them to even check emails about it. I don't even know what the solution would have been, but I do know that it took a lot of work to try to get them the info, and it failed. Struggles!
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