Case Study
Karen Hume
Educator, Author, and Speaker
Has the LYT Workshop changed your relationship to Knowledge in some way? If so, how?
Yes. I’ve always known that information is received while knowledge is built, but I’ve never experienced that before the workshop.
Has the LYT Workshop surprised you in any way?
Yes. Having watched many of Nick's Obsidian videos and participating in Flight School, I knew that Nick knew what he was doing in online learning. His video about the characteristics of a good learning environment confirmed that. But I had no idea that he had the skills in curriculum development and teaching that he does. This is a place where I am confident saying that I am an expert, so I hope he’ll take it seriously when I tell him that he is the BEST I’ve ever seen in engaging the learner, sequencing the learning, building in the work/reps, and providing meaningful feedback and support at the point of need. He hasn't missed a single step. Impressive!
What has made your experience transformational?
Over the last couple of years, I’ve identified half a dozen big areas of fascination. I’ve known there were connections to be made within and across those areas, but I was primarily a note taker with more than 16,000 pain points of everything from single pages to print journals to pieces of art to online course content to 500 page books. I have no physical clutter in my home. I don’t even have a junk drawer! But the mental clutter was doing me in. Developing a system to work with that knowledge has been transformational. I am very grateful.
What was your Aha Moment?
There really have been so many, but if I had to choose one it’s that right from the beginning all sessions have been heading for that ultimate goal of a personalized PKM system. While I knew that going in, the unrelenting focus on discovering more about myself as an individual and understanding how that knowledge would inform my unique PKM has been so powerful for me.
How is the workshop changing the game for you?
It has changed the game in note development. I used to read creative writing prompts similar to your prompt for ‘colour’ and I thought they were stupid and tossed them aside. Because you worked through the prompts with us and had us apply them to concepts of personal interest, I saw their value and now love developing my own notes. I read a lot of nonfiction and used to have dozens of post-it flags in a book so that I’d need to spend hours typing out other people’s thoughts. Now I read with your prompts in mind and I write my connections and clarifications of those thoughts. It’s so much more satisfying and so much less time-consuming/wasting.
About Karen
Karen Hume is a well known Canadian teacher, administrator, author, speaker, and workshop leader. The winner of three "Teacher of the Year" awards, Karen has taught all but four grades in K-12 (she especially enjoyed Grades 7 and 8), and has also been a teacher-librarian. As an administrator, Karen worked in a high-needs K-8 school and then led her district's efforts in reculturing schools to meet the needs of at-risk and struggling learners in Grades 7-12.
Karen has her M.Ed. in curriculum and teacher development, has been a member of a university research group funded to investigate the role of talk in the classroom, and is a member of the editorial board of an online action research journal.
Karen's writing, workshop facilitation, and keynote addresses revolve around differentiated instruction, which she sees as an organizing framework for everything that happens in teaching and learning at all levels of a school system. Her specific areas of interest within this framework include effective and responsive instruction and assessment; engaging the adolescent learner; developing effective learning communities for students and adults; literacy education; evidence-informed decision making; and change processes for adult learners.