What reflection might look like?

I came across this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson and I think it captures so much of what I feel about the challenge for educationalists, whether university lecturers or dance teachers. As your explore reflection on practice as a concept, I would be really interested to know your thoughts on Sir Ken's talk. You could look at his previous TED talk from four years ago, which I found inspiring, hilarious, but truly challenging as a teacher working within the education system. Sir Ken produced a seminal report on creativity in the curriculum, which you may wish to look at. I attach it as a PDF to Libguides (module WBS 3002).

Feedback on Part 1

I hope you have had a chance to look through the Blogs of new students on BAPP. Easy enough to view using Google Reader (check the Getting started with Web 2.0) on Libguides if unsure.

The first two weeks ‘tasks’ are clearly about getting you to feel part of a learning community, to get some Blog content, images and video up online and to explore the technologies. I am impressed how many students have got to grips with these and who have managed to post worthwhile, thoughtful Blogs. Where I have identified particular work I want to emphasise this is because I have seen a particular quality that I want to communicate to you. Please don’t see this as some sort of patronage if I mention you, or failure if I don’t! My purpose is only to offer my observations on some of the good practice, good ideas, good processes etc. I strongly recommend spending an hour viewing and commenting on other people’s Blogs as there is already a lot of valuable ideas and perspectives out there.

Flickr

I though some good examples of good use of Flickr are Cerys and Ross. I thought in their own ways, they capture the feel of Professional Dance and Musical Theatre well, and reminds me that these disciplines are visual as well as kinaesthetic.

YouTube

In terms of YouTube, I thought there was some really good work. For clarity and coherence I thought Alana’s was very good. This mixed media in an interesting way and had a polished quality. I was also particularly impressed with Stephie’s video. The focus of Stephie’s video is herself, talking about her aspirations. The video captures her ability to communicate effectively and the content of what she says is mature and convincing. As a visual artist, Stephie is able to articulate how she is going to make use of the wider creative community within BAPP.

Pros and Cons of Web 2.0

Many Blogs provided some very good evaluation of the Web 2.0 tools and their potential and actual roles within our professional practice. I thought Melissa in particular makes a good set of arguments and Mark does an excellent job taking us through the arguments. Also, the various groups at our first campus sessions put together some very good clips looking at the pros and cons and well worth a look (Campus Sesion 1 summaries from the groups).

Overall, those students who have engaged the first part of the programme have already created excellent online presence, and started the work of thinking and reflecting in a critical way… which incidentally is the topic of part 2 of BAPP.

taking a Case Study approch to a WBL project .... making arguments?

I have had a really interesting discussion with Grace Hoy about Case Study approach. While there are different ways of conducting Case Studies, I waned to post about the focus of the discussion with Grace. One of my thoughts on Case Study is that it is a ‘flexible’ research design. It’s often suggested as such in the literature. I suggest that what this means is that the tools you use to gather and analyse data are variable. One case study might place emphasis on interviews, another might emphasise observation.

However, I believe all good case studies should present ‘arguments’ and I hope to explain why.

When I read a Case Study I expect certain things:

· I expect the researcher to have some expert understanding of the ‘instance’ to be studied;

· I expect the researcher to develop certain ideas that they transmit to me as arguments to explain the phenomena or ‘instance’ under study;

· I expect the arguments to hang together effectively;

· I expect the arguments to be supported by evidence from the data gathered and cited so I can follow up on interesting ideas;

· I expect the arguments to be supported by measured reference to the appropriate literature;

· I want to know how the researcher relates to the questions, and specifically to be assured they are seeking to be as objective and balanced as possible, or to explain why they are promoting certain ideas;

· I do expect to have the arguments and any counter arguments explained, and for the researcher to say to what extent they think we should balance these. E.g. ‘X’ is clearly evident in the evidence, or ‘we can be certain /sure/fairly sure about ‘X’. This means as the reader, I can easily grasp the extent to which the researcher attributes certainty to the arguments (and usually expect the evidence to be cited at this point).

· I expect to be treated as an intelligent, but otherwise, non-specialist reader;

I suggest we might see Case Study as having two different aspects to the ‘case’. Firstly, we might interpret case as to mean the ‘instance’ under study. Secondly, we might also see it as the ‘Case’ being made by the researcher … that is the particular explanations that the researcher derives from the analysis of evidence.

I’d be happy to hear your comments on this.

Delicious tags to support your projects

I have been tagging links that I think are interesting and worthwhile, with specific focus on WBL projects. Of the various tags I have been using I always include 'bapp' as a tag as this means anyone searching on Delicious using this tag will find my tagged links. If you do the same, we can very easily share links.