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some things I thought about today

Wednesday, June 4th, 2014

Post #4 for #blogjune – where I just rattle off some random thoughts..

“What am I going to write today?”, I ask myself. Who knows, I’ll just going to keep typing for a few minutes and see what happens…

One thing in the back of my mind today is the paper I have to finish before the end of the month. It’s basically written, but stills needs some tweaking and a few hours of editing. I’m going to submit this for the ascilite2014 conference which has the theme of ‘Rhetoric and Reality’. It’s a good theme I think, and hopefully the conference will give us a good reality check against some of the rhetoric we see in higher education circles concerning education & learning with technology. I find some of the (rhetorical) discussion often distracts us from the real work of determining what works well and improves student learning outcomes. It will be good to be at an event where ideas can be presented and discussed – looking forward to it.

I believe there’s an ongoing discussion to be had about how we structure learning and assessment in this new (digital & social) age. How do we create authentic learning activities that apply some cognitive load and engage students enough for them to enjoy the hard work of learning? Are our students ready for this? What do they expect to do?

I’ve also been thinking about work-place culture and how we induct new academic staff to the ‘business’ of teaching. It’s quite a deal to start work in a new place and have to get your head around the IT systems involved, the teaching spaces and associated technologies, let alone the online learning system/space. There’s a significant overhead to get up to speed with these things, and I have been struggling with how to distill the essentials to ensure staff have enough of a grasp of things to get underway. Organised workshops can address some of the need, but I’ve found that face-to-face and at-the-elbow interaction is a productive way to help staff come to understand and gain confidence with their new environment. The BIG question for me is, does senior management recognise the need for staff support and professional development, and are they willing to invest resources for this? What are your thoughts and experience on this?

A rope in the grass

Came across a rope in the grass on my walk today – not a snake to be seen.

Today’s Word of the Day is ’sparge’ – I hope, dear reader, that you’re enjoying the sparge of ideas in these series of #blogjune posts.

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to be part of the gang…

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014

Post #3 for #blogjune – where I was wishing I was there, sort of…

I had half an eye on the twitter stream and the #edutech, #edutech2014 and #edutechau hashtags today (the organisers could have organised that better). Things were flowing! I guess with ~5000 delegates at the conference there was going to be some noise. Had to have the crap detector on, but people were definitely getting into sharing the love. The great thing about social media is that everyone can participate and it is a great way to get a sense of what’s happening out there…

Lovely to see lots of my Twitter ed-tech & e-learning friends attending and catching up with each other – it made me want to be there. There is something about being part of the gang at a conference, fun times, networking, exchanging ideas, being challenged, and testing our assumptions against others. Then there’s the presentation sessions where you get to hear from speakers – peers as well as keynotes – who usually give us something to consider. I always come away from such events with renewed enthusiasm and a sense of community having spent time with those of like mind. 

For now though, I’ll need to be content with attending the conference vicariously via the twitter stream and hope to catch some of those pearls cast before me. It’s a busy time in the office preparing for Semester 2, so plenty to keep me desk bound. But, come later in the year, the plan is to make it along to ascilite2014 where I’ll be able to catch up with friends at one of those conferences. 

Edutech tweets

The three columns in my Twitter feed that kept me in touch with my friends and proceedings at the #edutech conference. 

…and today’s Word of the Day is ‘embroil’, nothing wrong with a little embroiling at the appropriate time.

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learning to solve problems…

Monday, June 2nd, 2014

Post #2 for #blogjune – where I feel like it’s going to be a struggle…

Today I sat in on a Problem Based Learning (PBL) session where a small group of medical students had to finish off working through a patient case. PBL is a useful pedagogy that has been around for a while and does encourage students to investigate a range of issues involved in diagnosis, causes and treatment as a doctor would do. It does depend on all members of the group participating and a facilitator ensuring everyone is able to make a contribution. 

It was interesting to note that when students are post-grad and already have a degree such as optometry, nursing, physiotherapy or pharmacy, the other team members often look to the ‘expert’ to answer questions. This can shortcut the hard work of investigating the (learning) issues of the case so a facilitator helps keep things on track. 

I’ll be involved in the facilitating of such a group in semester two and wanted to see how the sessions run – I’m certainly going to have to brush up on my cardio-respiratory knowledge. 

In the meantime we are investigating if Team Based Learning might be a useful alternative as it’s a slightly different model and can provide better learning outcomes for weaker students. One issue that will need to be taken into account is the flexibility of learning spaces and how large the cohort of students is…

Walkies

Today I managed to get a walk in during lunchtime and strolled through this little forest – very fortunate to be in a workplace that has a parkland campus.

Oh, and the Word of the Day was ‘gnomist’ – nothing to do with studying little garden statues…

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getting those first words down…

Sunday, June 1st, 2014

This post started as a blank page that I kept looking at, wondering whatever I was gong to scribble on it so that it wouldn’t be blank anymore.

Waiting for inspiration didn’t work – too many dumb ideas and in no way, clever enough. The dictionary Word of the Day didn’t do it for me either: ‘braggart’ – couldn’t think of what to do with that.

So why signup for this #blogjune thing and start writing in this space again after neglecting it for nearly two years? The invitation from @flexnib, a rush of blood, a recognition that I should be writing regularly, or a need to start collecting my thoughts about a topic I’m interested in? Who knows, let’s see where it goes… I guess there’s always enough going on in my head to be able to turn some of it into text – I guess that a good part of the thinking process – getting it down on paper into a form that articulates an idea or two. 

Autumnal

The challenge to write every day for a month has been accepted, and I’m interested in seeing what the outcome is. Hopefully there will be something that evokes a response, so looking forward to comments.

Just in case the writing doesn’t work, I’ve decided to post a photo of something I’ve seen each day as well. 

PS. playing with the Word of the Day might have worked if I had spent some more time thinking about it…

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tweeting and/or regular blogging, a matter of discipline?

Friday, July 30th, 2010

I’ve felt that I’ve neglected this blog a little. While I’ve recently spent some time overseas on holiday/travelling and haven’t posted here for a while, I want to be more consistent in writing posts reflecting on my professional experiences. While I’m active in Twitter, the posts I make there aren’t as in-depth, or able to contain the resources I might include in a blog post.

So, I’m going to try and post every week on a Friday morning, and try to capture what’s happened during the past week. My intention is that this will become a ‘story’ of my journey as an educator and how I (we) might use of technologies to support learning and teaching. I also hope that I’ll provide information and reflections that are of interest to other educators/learners. I don’t think this is a huge commitment, but I understand that I’ll have to be disciplined to collect my thoughts (and resources) and set aside the time to write them down regularly.

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very ready for some inspiration and stimulation

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

It’s been too long since I wrote a blog post and tonight’s going to change that. I suppose I’m thinking about, and looking forward to attending the Learning Technologies Conference 2008: Learning Connections hosted by Sunshine Coast TAFE in Mooloolaba next week. It will be great to have some time away from work, learning new things, meeting & networking with people, catching up with twitter friends and looking out for inspiration and new ideas. Watch this space…

… but, I’ve been asking myself why I haven’t been writing, and think that there are a number of factors.

My professional work has been very busy as I adjust to a new role and I’ve needed to be closely involved with operational aspects of our learning management system. I’ve also started a research project and spent time developing an ethics application and creating an online survey using an open source tool called LimeSurvey. A fairly steep learning curve for all, this but things are starting to come together.

I wonder if my activity on Twitter has diverted some attention away from my thinking more deeply on subjects. Probably not, but it hasn’t led to me picking up ideas and running with them. I know this has been written about by others elsewhere, but believe that I may need to consciously make an effort to work at developing some of the ideas I come across, into blog posts rather than just leave it to 140 character tweets. I suppose what I’m saying is that I need to develop my one-liner tweets into more substantial missives (blog posts) and continue my professional journey narrative/story with longer chapters rather than individual sentences.

I do need to say though, that I’ve been getting great engagement with, and feedback from the (educational/technology) community I’m part of through Twitter, and see that it’s become an important part of my Personal Learning Network (PLN).

Another reason for lack of posting to ‘learnerbytes’, may stem from the fact that I’m posting regularly in other forums at work. Participating within the institution with colleagues has also been useful for me (and hopefully for others) and I hope to maintain my level of contribution there. Maybe I could post some of the topics/missives here on this blog, and link out to them from our internal forums. Hmm, food for thought.

So, that brings me to what I might write about next. I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye on what other people are posting on their blogs and that has made me think of a few things I’d like to write more about. Topics such as; portfolios (’e’ or otherwise), PLNs and how valuable/necessary they are, learning in higher education (what should we be trying to do?), mobile devices and the possibilities they might bring to learning and collaboration in education, communities of practice and how social software can support them, the mix of learning technologies for learning, professional development for educators, learning management systems, etc. Oh, and my research of course.

Any of those topics of interest to you? Anything you’d be able to contribute to my thinking about them? I would like to hear from you.

Talk to you soon…

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