Creating Passionate Users again has me pondering the similarities between good software design (and implementation) and good instructional design. Yesterday’s CPU entry, User Community and ROI, begins with this graph:
and goes onto make the argument that is stated in the caption. I’m not thinking primarily about money as I ponder this, but another thing of value: time. My time. I think in ReaL Earth System Inquiry project, we’re engaging in professional development that is effective because we’re developing a user community, and it’s not taking gobs of cash and the time is somewhat flexible.
There’s a second illustration in User Community and ROI that goes almost directly to what we’re doing tomorrow, in our workshop:
None of us are truly expert at Virtual Fieldwork Experiences though we’re all getting more advanced. We’re getting more advanced primarily because we’re helping each other along the way. Tomorrow, we reach out to a new set of potential users and expand the user group. I will hopefully do that again next week with the workshop at NSTA.
Am I right in thinking there are close parallels between what Kathy Sierra’s talking about in her post and what we’re doing in our collaborative professional development?
In what ways might this model inform what we do in our classrooms?
