Greetings!

There's a new blog post over at my education blog introducing the education team, and perhaps explaining the madness a little bit!

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/mostlyharmless/2016/12/27/meet-the-team/

Thanks!

Hi Ben!

The concept of an education team is a welcome idea, but I have come away from this article not knowing what the Education Team is, why it has been created or why it only contains Judges from the USA?

It's great to meet the team but it would be even more helpful to have a mission statement, some background on the project (as opposed to just its members) and an idea of some of your ongoing work-streams.

I am passionate about education and developing people, as I hope you can see from my profile, but at this stage I have no idea whether or not I might be able to contribute to your project or how it can help my peers and myself.

Thanks :)

PS I have read the other article about the state of the union but it still leaves me with mostly the same questions.

Edited Steve Ford (Dec. 28, 2016 04:49:14 AM)

There are more details in Ben's first post here:
http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/32223/
Though it doesn't answer all your questions, it is a start.

Ben's blog is a followthrough of the “reintroduction” of spheres (located here http://blogs.magicjudges.org/coordinators/2016/11/17/reintroducing-spheres/ )

His isn't a project; he's coordinating ALL the projects in the judge program that fall into the education realm. Helping ensure everyone who's working on education related things can get the program support they need.

How can you help? Join a project that falls in this realm. There's plenty of work to be done, and many public projects that need good judges to help make them awesome. If you have an idea for a project need that isn't being fulfilled with current ones, reach out to Ben with an idea on how to start one!

I hope I answered your questions :)

Edited Jeff S Higgins (Dec. 28, 2016 02:28:35 PM)

Good evening folks and thanks for your replies. I have read both posts on a number of occasions but sadly cannot view the reintroducing-spheres post, which is new to me, because the link doesn't work.

I think that I must not be expressing my confusion clearly enough, so perhaps I'll make a list of things that I would like to see form part of a new article to clear things up?

• An over-arching mission statement explaining (if I understand it correctly?) that this education team is about overseeing other projects within the education sphere and providing help/guidance/leadership/sharing experience. This wasn't clear from the most recent blog post, which is my first exposure to the team.
  
• It's nice to know interesting facts about other Judges, but it would be even better if we could hear about their experiences with education and what skills they bring to this team.
  
• Some clarity around “I have noticed that for quite a while the program has been something of a rudderless ship” which does not fit with my experiences of well-defined leadership roles and responsibilities in UKISA. I can click on one forum post and see that it's Thomas RALPH for Conferences or DL-S as my RC, and I know that each of them will provide me with excellent help, support and advice tempered by maturity and experience.
  

I would really like to understand how the education sphere will improve Judging and Judges and I look forward to a publication which makes these things accessible and easily understood. What are you trying to achieve? Why have you recruited the people you have? How will you go about things? These would make for a great update that would get your message out there and help clear up some of the misunderstandings that are not just limited to myself.

Thanks :)

Steve,

The link from Jeff had an extra ‘)’ at the end that make it not load. Here's the correct one

Shawn

Originally posted by Steve Ford:

An over-arching mission statement explaining (if I understand it correctly?) that this education team is about overseeing other projects within the education sphere and providing help/guidance/leadership/sharing experience. This wasn't clear from the most recent blog post, which is my first exposure to the team.

Ben addresses this here ( http://blogs.magicjudges.org/mostlyharmless/2016/12/19/education-state-of-the-union/ )

Ben McDole
Please allow me to clarify my role here. I think you can split up my duties across four specific areas:

1. Facilitate. Part of my job here is to help you. If you want to run a project, we can help with that! If you want to know if an effort is in motion, we can tell you! If you want help organizing a project in motion, we can certainly do that as well! I am here to make your lives easier.

2. Coordinate. I’ll be coordinating efforts across projects, and if need be across spheres! I’ve already been chatting with Juan (translations) and David (social media) about various things, and I expect to have chats with Lems and Alfonso in the near future. As it turns out some of my projects had already been coordinating already (Bryan and I on AMTR and AIPG). My favorite part of coordinating, we can cut down on duplication of effort!

3. Being a sounding board. I’ve run projects successfully. I’ve also run some projects that were not so successful. I’ve helped build up a group, and I’ve seen some strain. Again, I’m here to help kind of be a catch-all if you need someone to talk to about education stuff.

4. I kind of lied. This last one is what I’m NOT (emphasis mine) here to do:

Take over someone’s project. (I can help find a replacement by request if needed, see facilitate above.)
Remove a project lead. I’m here to help, not enforce some phantom standards. Your projects are your own. I can offer as much or as little help as requested.
Reassign resources. I’m again not here to poach people, steal work, etc. That’s not the intention, and should not be a fear you have!
Censure projects. I will not tell you no. If your goal is to run a project on the most corner cases have a blast. It’s not my place to tell you no, you can’t work on your passion project.

Originally posted by Steve Ford:

It's nice to know interesting facts about other Judges, but it would be even better if we could hear about their experiences with education and what skills they bring to this team.

In fact each of the bios for the people described talks about their specific experiences with education in the judge program (Eliana and the Buddy Project, Nicholas and Conference Learning, and Nicolette and Judge Classes).

Originally posted by Steve Ford:

Some clarity around “I have noticed that for quite a while the program has been something of a rudderless ship” which does not fit with my experiences of well-defined leadership roles and responsibilities in UKISA. I can click on one forum post and see that it's Thomas RALPH for Conferences or DL-S as my RC, and I know that each of them will provide me with excellent help, support and advice tempered by maturity and experience.

Its awesome you've had positive experiences in regard to roles & responsibilities in your region. I won't put words in Ben's mouth, but I'd imagine Ben has had different experiences than yours, and he's making an effort to remedy issues he's seen.

I hope I've answered all your questions (note I mainly copy/pasted from Ben's blog posts)

Edited Jeff S Higgins (Dec. 28, 2016 06:50:06 PM)

Jeff, thank you for taking the time to write back to me with such a detailed response. I can only reaffirm that I have read the above articles several times and sadly they do not answer my questions. I am mindful that communication is a two-way thing and that the problem could well be at my end, but I have spoken to other Judges who are also in the same position.

We are at risk of becoming cyclical so I will bow out as I am not contributing anything meaningful to this thread. I would like to thank colleagues for their replies and wish them good luck with their endeavours :)

Edited Steve Ford (Dec. 28, 2016 07:51:47 PM)

Steve I'm having trouble understanding which questions haven't been answered in separate blog posts or the earlier replies. Can you create a group email offlist with the others who are having trouble and I'll be happy to address them with the rest of the education team? Thanks!

I want to remind everyone about the Forum Protocol that says about this forum -

Announcements from various projects. Do not reply to posts in this forum, it doesn’t auto-lock to reduce the administration for project members that post and to maintain single threads for updating the same projects. If a post asks for a response, respond as instructed via email or via Contact a Judge.

Please do not reply to announcements in this forum.