Guest Patrick York discusses online learning and the SHARE organization. SHARE is designed to support teachers with learning, resources, and an opportunity to connect with others. Find SHARE at www.sharetolearn.com
Guest Patrick York discusses online learning and the SHARE organization. SHARE is designed to support teachers with learning, resources, and an opportunity to connect with others. Find SHARE at www.sharetolearn.com
Best brings you exciting and practical tips for improving your virtual teaching and virtual learning experience. I'm excited to talk with you today Patrick about share and your experiences and virtual teaching and learning. Can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?
00:19
Sure. I'm Patrick York, my colleague Tom arm breakfast, and I operate share, which is an acronym that stands for stories of humanity, and resourcefulness and education. And it started its life as a professional learning platform for in service K through 12 teachers. And over the years has kind of turned into something a little broader. We're hoping to provide courses and social emotional learning to both formal educators who are, you know, certified in the classroom, or in virtual classrooms teaching, but also people who may be teaching in their homes to their own children or maybe to others children as a result of COVID or maybe just trying something new in education. So Tom, and I have a podcast for the platform. And that's how I met you, Amy. And, and, yeah, so we are also producing those courses. In addition to that, I'm an instructional designer and a learning designer and have been for about eight years, I've worked with a couple dozen universities and putting courses online, worked with some fantastic faculty members built some really wonderful or helped to develop some really wonderful programs. And I'm really enthusiastic about learning design in general. And wine. I'm very excited about wind, probably for another conversation.
01:51
Yes, yes, you shared. I will I really love the page site. And I love what you're doing. I think that it's so necessary and needed. Are there any specific courses? I know you also do podcasts, anything in particular that you want to highlight?
02:08
Yeah, so we are in kind of a state of transition. We've talked about that briefly, in other conversations, but we have a number of free courses that are available to anyone and everyone one is called teaching through the coronavirus pandemic. And it was developed quite some time ago at sort of the beginning of the pandemic, when we noticed and sort of anticipated some of the effects that the pandemic was going to have on teaching and learning, especially from social emotional perspective. In addition, we have back to school during COVID-19, which right now costs money. But I mean, I think if anyone reaches out and says they want the course, I'll just, I'll just enroll them. Like I said, we're in a state of transition, because our product used to be a part of a larger organization, and now belongs to Tom and I, and we're transitioning into a new sort of payment model, trying to figure out something that's a bit more equitable, flexible, accessible to people.
So you know, if anyone's interested in accessing any of the materials on the site that now has a price tag on it, but wants to have a conversation about it. We're open to anything. We've got about 4000 folks on the platform right now who are enrolled in our free courses, and the paid courses, we've worked with a number of really great district partners, and individual teachers and administrators work with some really great subject matter experts on both coasts, and the Midwest, all across the country. And my colleague, Tom works in Berlin. So we're international now. But we have a lot of fun with it.
03:58
That's great. I really love your your background in this work and everything that you're doing. When we've talked in the past, you've shared with me that you have kind of a special philosophy about teaching and learning and, and technology's role in that. Would you like to share a little bit about that now?
04:15
Yeah, so I'm a bit of a Luddite. I guess I'm millennial Luddite, which is an interesting combination. I'm typically very skeptical of technology, even though my entire career has been in online learning. But at the same time, I think what I've discovered with share and with working as an instructional designer, is that fundamentally teaching is teaching. good teaching is good teaching. It doesn't matter if it's in a classroom if it's online, and obviously, as we've seen over the past year, plus, there are things that you can't do online. There are things that you that you have to Be in person to do.
So I think that the most promising thing about technology as a Luddite is that it makes really wonderful world class information available to more and more people. And so long as technology in education is used to extend that kind of information to more and more people, particularly people who belong to marginalized groups, the more powerful it is, the more beneficial it is, if it's used just to collect data that gives us a false sense of security, about outcomes and, you know, achievements by, you know, students in classrooms. I think that gives us, like I said, a bit of a false sense of security.
But my long term vision of the impact of technology in education is making regional sources of education, world class, so you could go down to your local library, and you could get the equivalent of a world class certificate or degree in the company of people who are in your community, not just people who are your same age, or come from a group that you also belong to, but people who are maybe going into a second career, or learning a new skill set, who might be a different age, or might have a different set of experiences. Because the internet, while it can be an awful place, is also a place that provides the opportunity for people with different experiences to learn together. And learning that is done between people with different experiences and different identities is always stronger and more durable.
06:49
Well, yeah, that's really powerful. So tell me if I was going to go on to the pay site, and I'd never been on that site before. What would my learning experience be like?
07:02
Yeah, so the learning experience on share is all asynchronous. So the user logs on, anyone can create an account for free and we don't know collect any sort of personal data, all you really have to do is enter your name and your email address. And you can say whether or not you want to receive emails from us, it's you're not obligated to. And we very rarely send out any communique. So don't worry that we're going to spam you. And then once you're in, every user has a catalog, and a dashboard. And the catalog shows all of the courses that are currently available, those that are free, and those that cost, there's an e commerce portal built in. So if there's something that you like and want to purchase, you can, like I said, we're in the process of transitioning, looking at our prices, trying to make things a little more accessible. And I should have more information on that in the next coming weeks. And then once you either enroll in a free course or purchase a course that costs you can pop right into it, finish it at your own pace.
And we really focused on multimodal learning, both Tom and I have a background in learning design. He was on faculty at University of Wisconsin Madison for I think 14 years, and has been involved in online education since its beginning, really, in many capacities. So we've taken his experience and mine over the past years about creating learning experiences that are more than just watching a really cool video or like reading a bunch of text, but introduce concepts in various ways, in ways that are very intentionally designed, so that you can walk away with it with a more both broad and specific concept of what you're learning and a number of ways to practically apply it to your comp your context.
And you know, once you go through the lessons, watch videos and play with some interactives and do some scenario work through some scenarios. Then there are a number of, like I said, practical applications and opportunity for discussion with other people who are enrolled in the same course. And these people are across the country. Now there's no kind of partitions between people. It's just everyone's in the same course. So you can talk to someone in Idaho or in Georgia or in Belize. I think we've got someone from Belize in there. And yeah, so that's kind of tip to tail. The experience.
09:47
Yeah, that's a really cool feature. I actually didn't realize that you had the online discussion board like that. That's great. So I heard you use the word multi modal and I know you and I are probably comfortable with that yourself. Probably even more comfortable with that term than I am. And but in simple terms, and I know you mentioned some examples here, can you just sum up for the audience? What? What you mean by multimodal? Of course? Yeah.
10:12
So there's, I can't remember the researcher that I learned this term from, so apologies to her or him, wherever.
10:24
That's okay.
10:26
But the concept of universal design for learning, I think, is a very powerful concept. And one of the central tenants of universal design for learnings as if you're presenting information in one way, you should also have a plus one mentality, which means if I have a video like this, where I'm talking and presenting material, I should at least think of one other way that I can share that material with the learner.
Because study after study shows that if you have an image that presents an idea, it's good. If you have some text that describes a concept, it's okay. But if you have an image with some text, and somebody else speaking over it, and describing it in different terms, than the learning is much more powerful, it embeds our short term memory much more effectively, and actually leads to changes in behavior. So multimodal learning means that we use many different modes of delivery, video, text, audio, whatever you can, not because, you know, everyone learns, you know, auditorily, or visually, because I think that's been a bit disproven. But because variety is both the spice of life and the spice of learning.
11:50
That's great. I love how you went into universal design for learning. That's something at MCU that I know we really try to weave into all of our courses and programs now. And the way that you described it, what worked really well for me, so I'm glad that you shared that. So at the end, is there anything else before we move on to just kind of closing out our interview? Is there anything else you want to share or things you want to say about share or your experience with virtual teaching and learning?
12:20
Um, let's see. I think that about covers share, we're hoping to add more courses over time. So I'd say just, if you want to go to the site and check it out, it's very simple. It's just share to learn.com. And that's to share to learn.com. We have a blog there, where we post all of the episodes of our podcast with transcripts, and then also the occasional article. You know, and if there's anyone who's interested in writing an article about social emotional learning, or about online teaching and learning or about just education, generally, we're open to that we're always trying to write more and share for me and Tom is I don't want to diminish it by calling it a side gig because it's not really a side gig. But it's one of the many things that both he and I do. So we're carving out more time for it, trying to figure out ways to make the content really valuable to everyone who visit the visits the site, and try and make as much of it free as possible.
13:28
That's great. So needed, I am grateful for you. I'm grateful for the work that you're doing. I know from working in K 12 education and working with parents who've, you know, now teaching their students at home or have decided to do homeschooling, I know how valuable your site is going to be, and already is for so many people. So thank you to you and your colleague for doing that work. So before we end, I want to ask everyone who visits us because I'm very curious about this answer. to kind of fill in the blank. I used to think virtual teaching and learning was now I think virtual teaching and learning is I guess, simply put, I used to think virtual teaching and learning was substandard. And this was many, many years ago. I'd never would have taken a degree online or taken a course online.
And now years later, I think virtual teaching and learning is the way we democratize learning. I I've taken so many classes online, and that's through universities, but that's also through different platforms like Duolingo or yousician or masterclass or YouTube and my wife and I have actually renovated our entire house, we painted it, we redid the kitchen, we've done everything ourselves because of the power of people all around the world who log on to the computer. And they say I've done some very cool things, and I want to teach other people how to do them. And that's not just renovation. That's not just social emotional learning. It's everything. And the more people who are out there, just saying, I've done this, I even want to maybe make this a career for myself by gathering some ad revenue, or, you know, however, they make it work on YouTube. But just the idea that you can really learn to do anything online, is very powerful.
15:40
Right? I couldn't agree more. I have a daughter that learned how to read by, you know, listening to how a word was pronounced online, and then she'd go back to her book, taught herself how to read that way. So I couldn't agree more. And it's it's exciting to talk with other people in the field who feel similarly about the shift towards virtual and, you know, teaching and learning being real, and, and valuable and not substandard.
16:12
Yeah, yeah. And I think that the key to it is that it can operate in that way, formerly, at a university, it can operate that way. And community colleges, which I think are really kind of excellent institutions for learning. It can work that way at a library, it can work that way in the home. And the more we don't kind of put partitions between different types of learning, the more we kind of value all learning. I think the better off we are, especially because, you know, the old way would be like there's one path to a career, you got to learn X, Y, and Z. And then you, you get that career.
And that's what you do until you die isn't a reality for anyone in my generation, and isn't a reality for anyone in this in the next generation. So you can look at it and be kind of disappointed by the fact that I will never have a job that gives me a pension, like ever. That's really kind of disappointing. Or you could look at and say like, Well think about all of the variety. Like, I've also founded two businesses just on watching YouTube videos and talking to people who've done it before. And it's not because I'm unique. It's just because there's so much out there now. And really the most important skill to develop, I think for anyone is, especially when it comes to figuring out what's good. And what's bad online, is figuring out how to, you know, curate materials, look at enough of them to really see what is a value and what isn't. And there are so many people like you and the and the folks at vasque, who can kind of help people figure out what is of value, both in developing online learning, and also being the recipient of it.
18:10
Well, that's the hope. But I have Okay, I know I said I was ending, but you threw this out there. So I just need to ask, I know that you are doing some work with a winery? And maybe did you learn about that online as well as as an is that an example of online learning and what it can do?
18:28
Absolutely. Yeah. So two years ago, my brother and our friend, Dustin, were just like, we'd laugh about it. Because like every group of dudes at one point like looks at each other and goes, we should open a bar. Like that just happens. And that was that was us, but like our version was like we should start a winery. And then we were like, Yeah, but maybe we can so you know, YouTube video after YouTube video visiting. Visiting the tobacco firearm or alcohol firearm Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau websites, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board of California, talking to a bunch of really generous winemakers like DiMaggio, Washington that we work with. He's like our alternating prepares proprietorship host. And I have a meeting with Ann Reynolds of the wine compliance Alliance later today.
But there's so many people who are scrappy, and resourceful and put information out there, you know, and it took reams and reams of paperwork to do it and checks and rechecks and, you know, opening accounts with the CDT FA and just, I mean, just describing all of these acronyms would take hours. But at the end of the day, we opened a very small natural winery, and we just released our first vintage last Friday and We built the website with online learning. We figured out how to make wine and build relationships with thoughtful farmers. Online, we use the power of online learning to figure out e commerce and to stay within compliance and make sure that in a heavily regulated industry, we're doing everything aboveboard. And it's paid off. I mean, we got a winery two years later.
20:26
That's great. That's great. Is there a brand name that you want to put out there? Oh, sure.
20:32
If you're willing to do a shameless plug. We're, we're Herman York, wine. So it's great. The website is h E, double r Ma, double n, York dot wine. And we're almost out of wine. It's really selling quick. So that's great. It's just evidence that anything is possible. Anything is possible, as you talked about so many opportunities for virtual learning. So I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being on best with us.
21:07
Yeah, thank you. I mean, it was a pleasure. And I'm happy to do it. Good luck with the rest of the guests.
21:13
Thanks. Take care. Thanks for joining us on vesc. This is Dr. Amy Lin. Remember, learning is right at your fingertips.