One of my great passions in life is using adult education theory to create learning-centered training – working out how learners can best learn so they then go on to flourish. A significant addition to this in recent years is digital education, to which there are...
Addressing the Uniqueness’s of Learners – Does Digital Really Help? (Part II of V)
I could sense around me that I was losing my learners. It was during an early experience of me training them to use software to help with language learning. But these learners had very different levels of experience of using software and while I was helping some who...
Digital Training – Enabling Better Discussion? (Part III of V)
One participant came to speak to me about how the training session had been for her. At this early stage as a trainer, I had thought it had been good, but I listened. I had engaged participants with the content and had facilitated good discussion, either in small...
The Power of Peer Review and Implications for Digital Learning (Part IV of V)
There were many challenges throughout my course. Electricity was intermittent. English, the language of communication, had varying levels of understanding among participants. But the biggest challenge was the cultural shift to a dialogue approach to learning; a big...
Digital Learning in a Community of Practice (Part V of V)
Silence. Total silence. It was after one of the highlights for me of the Digital Education Masters program through The University of Edinburgh. Two world experts in their field had been discussing their topic together in a Skype class, with the rest of us listening in...
Digital Learning and Powerful Questions
We all face the situation of COVID-19 just now and for many of us, it means that our only chance to see friends and family is through online interaction. We miss face-to-face contact and await the time when it is again an option for us. But one result of this time...
Supporting the Offline Participant in an Online Setting
This recent demand that we all become online participants and facilitators has many rewards and challenges. There is a different intention to our interaction and our time together. Our learning environment has become more isolated and independent, regardless of a...
Miro as a Digital Whiteboard
One of my teams started using Miro as a digital whiteboard, and I was really excited to be able to use the "sticky notes" (term used by Miro) function to brainstorm and sort ideas like we’ve done with Post-it notes in-person. Once we tried it out, it became clear...
Jamming with Jamboard, a Virtual Whiteboard
If you have ever attended an International Budget Partnership (IBP) in-person training, chances are you scribbled some thoughts on tiny sticky notes and stuck them on flip charts around the room. We at IBP love our flip charts, color markers and sticky notes. We haul...