shelleypaul

Becoming Narrative Champions

Posted by Dean Shareski on in techlearning 7 Comments

This post was last updated on September 5th, 2011 at 11:03 am

Dean and AlecCross posted on TechLearning
 
I talk about sharing a lot. It’s a pretty big word that means many things to many people. This past weekend my colleague Alec Couros and I had the chance to lead a conversation at Educon at Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy. We asked people to explore the meanings of words like sharing, transparency, copyright and openness. It’s important to have these discussions as those words are used differently and mean very different things. Unwrapping these terms led to some powerful insights for me.

Steven Berlin Johnson’s recent book Where Good Ideas Come From talks about the value of sharing and how ideas emerge not always from singular moments but from stitching together the collective ideas that we get from others. The chaotic nature of these discussions means we need to make meaning and connections on our own. As Johnson says, good ideas are rarely eureka moments but rather take a long time to incubate and mature.

So the idea that really resonated for me was re-imagining leaders as storytellers. As we discussed the barriers of sharing and telling the stories of great

… Read the rest

Playing with ideas at Educon

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Conferences, presentations 6 Comments

This post was last updated on October 3rd, 2011 at 12:42 am

I don't go to conferences to get new ideas. I've been down that road. That's not to say that there's nothing for me to learn but as connected as I and many others are, it's rare that something will be shared that is completely new. I attend conferences to play with ideas. That's why Educon is a great conference. It fosters and encourages playing with ideas. 

I was involved in leading 2 conversations and both were learning experiences for me. Darren Kuropatwa and I led a session called "What's Wrong with This Picture?" I learned a lot during our planning stages and since Darren and I have never presented together before, it took some time to get our cadence and feel. We both felt there were some good things we did and also some things we would change if we were to present this again. Educon sessions generally focus around rich conversations using a variety of formats and strategies but the idea is for as many as possible to participate. Darren and I wanted to see if we could get our participants to play and … Read the rest