Welcome to Part 1 of the “Learning LSL” blog series! The Digital Age is a time of surplus information and endless accessibility. The result has been a fundamental shift in how we acquire new knowledge.
Our world has opened up, and traditional learning channels (while still completely valid) are no longer sufficient on their own. We need to embrace this new personal learning channel: the digital world.
If you’re like us, you’re also chomping at the bit to utilize all of the great information now available at your fingertips. You know how valuable it can be for your personal development, but you’re wondering, How do I tame it and put it to work?
There is a solution for personal learning in the Digital Age: Personal Knowledge Mastery (or PKM). By incorporating PKM into our new age behavior, we’ll be able to accomplish the goals we have to improve ourselves and our listening and spoken language practice. You may have heard of personal knowledge management, but we don’t want to just manage knowledge. We want to master it.
The first step to personal knowledge mastery is the Seek-Sense-Share learning model. It was created by Harold Jarche, connected learning specialist, and it’s a concept that Hearing First supports for learning through our personal and professional networks. This learning model helps us make that data meaningful by being productive in our work and in the world of LSL. So, how does Seek-Sense-Share work exactly?
Jarche defines the Seek-Sense-Share model like this:
SEEK
Seeking is how we discover new information and keep up to date. Building a network of colleagues is key. Not only does this allow us to pull information, it also creates a way to have information pushed to us by trusted sources.
SENSE
Sensing is how we personalize and use information. Sensing includes reflection and putting into practice what we’ve learned. It often requires experimentation, as we learn best by doing.
SHARE
Sharing is how we exchange resources, ideas and experiences with our networks, as well as collaborate with our colleagues.
Source: Harold Jarche’s “Seek, Sense, Share”; Creative Commons BY-NC 2012; Jarche.com
For us, Seek-Sense-Share is a way to improve LSL outcomes for children who are deaf or hard of hearing by improving the way LSL professionals and families learn out loud, collaborate, connect and exchange ideas. We created the infographic below to show Seek-Sense-Share from an LSL point of view:
How might the Seek-Sense-Share concept help us achieve better outcomes for children who are deaf or hard of hearing through the LSL approach?
As a LSL learner, you would seek information that’s relevant to you from colleagues and peers in your professional home (where you work every day) and through a personal learning network (which might include blogs you follow, Twitter, Pinterest or Facebook).
Look for active curators of quality content—valued members of knowledge networks. As an LSL professional, you might seek information from researchers focused on early learning, early brain development or early literacy because this knowledge can have a direct impact on your practice and how you provide intervention. Recognizing that need, Hearing First provides LSL content on our site, through our blog and in social spaces to be a point of contact for people seeking LSL information.
Once you receive information, you find ways to “make sense” of it. While reviewing this new knowledge, ask yourself questions to filter and validate it:
Remember to take advantage of the ways you learn best. For example, are you a visual learner? Do you need to jot down notes to remember something? Use whatever way works best for you. This model needs to be unique to you in order for it to work.
Knowledge doesn’t do much good if it’s just stored away—it needs to be used, tested and experienced. For this reason, it’s important to continuously share what we’ve learned. There are so many ways to share our experiences, insights and application with others. You might...
An important aspect of sharing is providing your own insight—think of it like personal thought leadership. When you share a piece of information, tell people what you’re thinking about it, or include practical examples of how you’ve put it into practice.
In our original blog post on connected learning, we shared three facets of learning: professional homes, learning communities and personal learning networks. The actions of Seek-Sense-Share can occur in each of them.
While this model can sound very linear, the process of Seek-Sense-Share doesn’t have to happen in a structured form. As we move through different tasks and roles in our day, we begin to collect learnings, make sense of what we’ve discovered and share it with others as we go. It is through this sharing process that collective minds can solve more problems, improve our practice and make greater gains in LSL outcomes for children with hearing loss.