It must have been back in around 1998 when I first met Gary Stager. That was in a small seminar room at the Fremantle yacht club. I have to say that he was not an instant hit with me due to his style of speaking but his message was on the money. Since then, Gary and I have met up at various venues and I am always impressed by his passion for reform of education and learning to ensure that it meets the needs of young learners.

Someone else who has a love-hate attitude towards Gary is Doug Johnson. This recent post about an article by Gary is very telling. The post itself is well worth the read if you have time.

I have to hand it to Gary for having the guts (as we aussies say) to organise the sort of Professional Learning opportunity that I have dreamt of running.  Called Constructing Modern Knowledge 2008, Gary had contacted me about it a couple of months ago.  It sounds like the perfect way to throw educators in at the deep end of really embracing 21st Century Learning in a constructivist framework. This fabulous description of the session comes courtesy of Silvia Martinez who runs the Gen Yes programme in the US.

I don’t think that there are many, if any schools in Hong Kong who have staff ready to go quite this far yet. But then, I might be wrong!

Do you think your staff would happily embrace someone coming in an leading them through an open-ended professional learning session or would they complain and ask for the content, the “real meat” of the workshop?

I am interested in your thoughts.