In a recent blog Making Room for Magic, author Annie O’Shaughnessy says that the key to “making room for magic” is to create learning conditions where participants make their own magic. When this magic happens, she explains, participants find personal and powerful connections with the learning: they become agents in their own learning; they are deeply engaged.
Take a moment to think about a time when you attended a workshop and entered a room full of unfamiliar faces. What feelings did you experience? Anticipation, fear, maybe excitement. Rogers and Hammerstein’s famous song lyrics come to mind “Getting to know you, getting to feel free and easy. When I am with you, getting to know what to say.”
When designing any learning event, the Dialogue Education method demands that you develop in advance a deep understanding of who will participate, taking into account their individual experience and needs so that you can tailor the design specifically for them; any...
Using certain themes in our learning tasks can have an electrifying effect in motivating learners. But how do we find themes to motivate most of the learners in our group rather than just a few? This post is about how I have grappled with that question. What motivates...
I was first introduced to Jane Vella’s steps of design and the world of Dialogue Education™ during my graduate studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. To say that my world was flipped upside-down would be an understatement. I found it extremely encouraging to know...
I have the honor of working with Matthew Norman from Barcelona, Spain – a colleague and Certified Dialogue Education Practitioner (CDEP). He is teaching pastors in his church community how to use Dialogue Education in designing and delivering sermons. This is...
Some years ago, I led a workshop that was based on an outline I had developed and used in previous settings. At earlier events, the activities and script had been well-received, including a humorous anecdote about shoveling snow in my hometown of Chicago that always...