Helping you become a change agent – beginner series

Last night I participated in a TLCafe session at Learncentral. Gywneth Jones and Joyce Valenza had Ben Hazzard and Rodd Lucier review their Educon presentation “Field Guide for Change Agents” I enjoyed the Educon workshop and their presentation last night as well.

Out of the chat room came an interesting discussion about Derek Sivers and this commentary on leadership in his blog post Leadership lessons for Dancing Guy and his ted talk which I have posted here below.

The conversation goes something like this;

It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

The summary take away comment for me is this one: –

“It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.
There is no movement without the first follower”

There is a lot of conversation going on about making changes in education and if you were to embrace Siver’s comments you might be wondering how to be the first follower when there are so many barriers to limit your chances of changing status quo.

The beginner series at www.elearningcenter.ca offers you the opportunity to test drive some web 2.0 tools to help you get over the jitters of dancing center stage. We have purposely geared the beginner series to allow people the opportunity to ask questions and try out a tools with a trainer working with them during session. The next session is scheduled for Wednesday April 7. 2010 at 7:00 PM EDT Topic is Setting up a classroom blog. Link to Webinar http://tinyurl.com/lcparticipant Its free and it might just help you be a change agent.

Classroom Blogging Workshop at Elearning center

If you missed Kim and Lorna’s Elearning Center’s Blogging for Beginners webinar on March 31, 2010, you can still get a chance to create your own blog using Weebly. On Wednesday April 7, 2010 at 7:00 PM EST (GMT-4) we will be running a second blogging workshop and we will also be talking about using blogs in the classroom. Time Zone Converter. Participants in the session will receive a 25% discount on a Weebly pro account.

Please join us by following this link to the session held in the Learn Central Elluminate room.

In this session you will get an overview of how to use Weebly to create a website and Blog for free. Weebly is a great out of the box solution with free hosting and no ads. The drop and drag solution gets you up and running in a a few min. The participants in our session had a web site and had started blogging by the end of the hour. With Weebly you can use images, video and audio, contact form, discussion forums along with polling and other great features.

This screenshot illustrates one of the out of the box professional looking themes. Click the image to enlarge.

If you can’t make it to the session, please feel free to watch the recorded session.