SoloJourno

photo credit: Bill Erickson (via Flickr)

I’ve been in a lot of classrooms and this is how I’ve always thought the learning demographics shook out: 1/4 of students want to learn, 1/4 don’t care and will probably fail (or close enough) and the remaining 1/2 just want to get a good grade and move on without really retaining anything. Maybe that’s way off base. Adjust the numbers however you like, but every classroom has some mix of those three groups of people—newsrooms are no different.

My job requires me to do a fair amount of teaching (which is sometimes forced) and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that it often leads to a good deal of frustration. If we’re going by my quarter/quarter/half rule, the problem is that the majority of your “students” either don’t care or just want to pacify you enough to stop bugging them. I think a lot of us on the New Media side respond by lecturing or throwing our hands up, but I think there’s a better way.

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