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.

Beginner Blogger Webinar

As part of the Beginner series at www.elearningcenter.ca, Kim Caise and Lorna Costantini will be hosting a free webinar for people new to blogging. Each participant will create their own blog and learn how to publish content and connect to other bloggers. The webinar is scheduled for Wednesday March 31, 2010 at 7:00 PM EST (GMT-4 – TIme Zone converter) at www.learncentral.org Here is the link to Register for the Elluminate session.

So often we try to teach ourselves how to learn a new technology by watching videos and reading tutorials and we do it but take a lot of time and energy to master a new task. The workshops and webinars at www.elearningcenter.ca are you opportunity to speed up the process and facilitate your learning a new technology task.