New Book Details How to Design a Human-Centric Future of Learning Emerges from Pandemic Teaching Experience

CLEVELAND, OHIO, USA, December 21, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ -- “I can say unequivocally that my teaching is better because of the things that technology enables me to do. I can also say unequivocally that the pandemic has made my class better than it was before it hit.” This is the central message of "Learn at Your Own Risk: 9 Strategies for Thriving in a Pandemic and Beyond", a new book by Tom Haymes, published by ATBOSH Media, Ltd. "Teachers using digital tools with the aim of humanizing instruction were the key to successful learning during the pandemic. Creating human-centered learning is also fundamental to our educational future.” says Haymes.

The story of 2020 has been one of sacrifice in education. Students were asked to sacrifice the quality of their learning for their own and their community’s safety. Schools and colleges were asked to sacrifice the richness of the “learning experience” for the cold embrace of technological systems. There is no doubt that many sacrifices have had to be made this year, many of which have been immensely tragic. Learning should not have been one of them.

"Learn at Your Own Risk: 9 Strategies for Thriving in a Pandemic and Beyond" is the product of applying 40 years as a technologist, 20 years as a teacher, and over a decade implementing real-world technology solutions to the particular challenges of learning in the Digital Age. When the sudden enforced isolation of the pandemic hit, Haymes turned his attention to helping the populations he knew best as a teacher, technologist, faculty developer, and administrator at a large urban community college survive and thrive during the crisis. Combining his experience with lessons learned in the process of teaching academically challenged higher education students forms the core of the nine strategies outlined in the book.

Learning is a process of conversation, between the teacher and students, among the students, and, most importantly, within the minds of the students themselves. We have lost sight of this as teaching technology, starting with the blackboard in the mid-19th Century, emphasized the broadcast of learning rather its facilitation. Remote teaching has exposed the cracks in this approach. From the book, “To make something digital is to make transparent all of its flaws. What we are seeing right now is the lifting of the veil that has obscured the vast majority of teaching that occurs in our classrooms on a daily basis.” We can do better. We owe it to our students.

"Learn at Your Own Risk" represents a set of 9 strategies designed to help teachers rethink how they reach their students; using technology to bring the student to learning rather than using it to fling learning to the digital winds. The book starts with the central premise that there is no substitute for the human connections at the center of learning. Technology can augment but never replace those connections. Digital technology also gives us opportunities to manipulate time and space in ways that were impossible when we relied exclusively on the physical world to communicate with our students.
The Digital Age allows school to be anywhere and anytime. The opportunities it creates will not disappear with the virus. Teaching and learning can emerge from the strictures of the pandemic with new ways of thinking about what we are doing with our students that can has the potential to put the human back at the center of education forever. "Learn at Your Own Risk" shows us the way.

Learn at Your Own Risk: 9 Strategies for Thriving in a Pandemic and Beyond by Tom Haymes
6x9" trade paperback, 196 pages, print ISBN: 9781626133013

Print book available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram.
E-book available from Amazon, Google, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Smashwords.

ATBOSH Media Ltd. is an Agency Press in Cleveland, Ohio that publishes authors in almost any genre or subject. As an agency press, they also serve as the literary agent for both the book and its derivative works (such as television and film productions).

Larger publishing houses interested in publishing or distributing the work or production companies interested in optioning the work should contact Jared Bendis.

Tom Haymes is also available for interviews, consulting, and speaking engagements, virtually, for now and in any modality post-pandemic.

Jared Bendis
ATBOSH Media Ltd.
216-288-6349
email us here

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