Musings - Just Learning

I am joining a few others who have been blogging their endorsement of Jeff Lebow for the Technology and Leader of the Year award: Jen Maddrell, Dave Cormier, Alex Ragone, John Schinker, Jeff Flynn and Lee Baber.

My words are not nearly as eloquent as theirs, so please do check out their endorsements as well.

Jeff Lebow is a world-class educator who possessed the vision to establish WorldBridges, a community of communities which serves a variety of educators from around the world. He has largely done this on his own initiative and has provided much of the funding for the servers and hosting of the necessary technology elements over the past few years of its existence. He has also provided training and support to a large group of educators who have wanted to learn how to webcast over the Internet. The training was provided at a distance through asynchronous and synchronous tools and environments found on the WorldBridges sites.

In essence, Jeff has freely and graciously provided his considerable expertise to train educators so that they, in turn, can teach and build networks of support for other educators and learners. Thousands of educators have accessed the WorldBridges sites where audio files (podcasts) from shows hosted by the educators are stored.

My own personal involvement with WorldBridges began over a year ago as I would listen to some of the shows hosted by educators who had been trained by Jeff. About a year ago, I started to host a weekly show for educators along with three other educators (the Women of Web 2.0). Later I would receive training from Jeff from the Webcast Academy so that I could myself handle the technical aspects of hosting a live audio webcast over the Internet. We have now had over forty weekly shows which feature guests who are innovative leaders and thinkers in education from around the world. We are aware that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have since accessed those audio files.

Without the leadership and vision of Jeff Lebow, these shows would not be possible. WorldBridges provides the infrastructure and environment which supports a large network of educators who are seeking to learn and grow from each other.

I heartily endorse the nomination of Jeff Lebow for this notable award because of the positive impact his efforts, through WorldBridges, have had on so many educators around the world who have, in turn, influenced the next generation of learners.

Sharon Peters

M.A. (Educational Technology)

Pedagogical Consultant

LEARN (Leading Educational and Resource Network, Québec)