‘Systemising' our thoughts

I believe a key aspect of effective learning is the ‘systemisation’ of information. I believe, well actually we know that our brains are exceptionally well adapted at noticing patterns. I think this means amongst other things that we can use the creation of patterns to enhance our learning. This can happen by forming information into a system. A system can be a list, or map, or diagram or an argument. The act of forming information into a system is to make it easier for the brain to make sense of it and draw it into memory.

OK this is all pretty obvious. But what then if we use it intentionally and playfully to try out different patterns?

Creating lists is to create a hierarchy. This means we intentionally place information into certain locations. These locations sit ‘above’ or are ‘higher’ order ideas than the information, and hence a hierarchy is created.

So try to organise, and reorganise information and ideas into patterns as this will help you to ‘make sense’ of even the most complex material.

An example of a hierarchy is Ciera’s Blog.

And how is this relevant? Well research is information that has been systemised by you the researcher ... so worth thinking about?

Experinces of a BAPP student

Jessica Clipp kindly offered to ‘speak about her experience as a BAPP student’. I think this shows the impact this had on Jessica as a learner, and also how it influenced her employer to give her a full time job.

Example of a WBL Project

Now we are thinking about the topic for projects, I though it might be worthwhile to see a graduate speaking about a project. Jessica Clipp graduated last year from BAPP and works at the Chickenshed Theatre. Here is Jessica speaking about her project. Jessica undertook by any standards a complex project that had many dimensions. It might be a helpful exercise to listen a couple of times to the video and note down what you thought the issues might be.

The Virtual Revolution

Check out The Virtual Revolution - 1. The Great Levelling?

Quoted from the BBC (accessed 1.40pm 1/2/2010) Twenty years on from the invention of the World Wide Web, Dr Aleks Krotoski looks at how it is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives. Joined by some of the web's biggest names - including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web's inventor - she explores how far the web has lived up to its early promise.

In the first in this four-part series, Aleks charts the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube, and traces an ongoing clash between the freedom the technology offers us, and our innate human desire to control and profit.

Handing in / arrangements due to bad weather

The bad weather is causing severe difficulties with travel, and is likely to continue for the next few days. This may mean work posted to the University will arrive later than expected. Campuses are closed today (Wednesday 6th January) and may remain closed further into this week.

If you have already posted your work, you need take no further action. Work arriving late due to difficulties with postal deliveries will not be penalised.

If you intended handing in your work to Cat hill campus today (Wednesday 6th January), please keep your work with you and check the University web page after 9.30am (www.mdx.ac.uk) each morning to see if the to see if Cat Hill is open. If the Campus is open, please deliver your work to the Student Office if you are able to do so. Please do not take risks travelling if the conditions are dangerous. When conditions permit, please deliver your work to Cat Hill campus. Do not post work after today (Wednesday 6th January) as deliveries are likely to be delayed.

Please note that you will not be penalised for late delivery of work for assessment. We ask that you make reasonable effort to deliver work if the campus is open. Realistically this may be towards the end of this week when the forecast suggests a slackening of snowfall.

Access to Learning Funds

If you have already heard from Student Finance England about your application for a grant, and you have received the full grant payable (i.e. 50% of fee for the year), you may be eligible for an Access to Learning Fund award.

Reflecting on formal learning, feedback and professional practice

One of the challenges of ‘formal’ education (School; college; University) is that it sets out certain conventional ways of doing things. You know, a classroom is like ‘this’; a lecture is like ‘that’. And those conventional ways of doing things, the ‘conventions’ of education, bear little resemblance to the actual ways in which we conduct our professional, working lives. The conventions of education perhaps are built upon the preferences and conveniences of the educator more than the needs of learners?

One of the conventions of schooling at all levels is that the teacher is dominant in the relationship. It’s a ‘master’ and ‘apprentice’ model that I think permeates all educational thinking from the ancient to the current.

As learners, indeed as professionals engaged in learning, I propose that we need to think differently about the act of learning. I think we can think of learning as something that is not ‘transmitted’ by the master to the apprentice, but something constructed by learners themselves (if interested, you might do some follow up reading on Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky ideas of social constructivism and education). If this makes sense, then the teacher’s role is to enhance the opportunities to make meaningful and worthwhile knowledge constructions. Additionally, it might mean that anyone, not just the teacher, can contribute to the process of learning of another individual.

This is why we have created, and want to engage in a learning community, and to see your Blogs as more than complying with assignments, but far more than that. They are one way of connecting with professional practitioners within the programme and very importantly, with professional practitioners beyond the programme. The Blogs, and other technologies come to represent the way we are all developing our professional networks, and how these networks can contribute to our learning.

So when we come to think about feedback, you might get a better understanding of why your teachers are giving such prominence to the ideas and comments of others, over our own. We want you to find and appreciate the way forward by seeing good practice around you, rather than seeing what the teacher thinks as the dominant ‘voice’. It is our conviction as teachers that the professional conversations you strike up and develop (on the programme and beyond) are what matter, not what you teacher thinks. I believe our role is to guide and enhance those conversations, and to place value on the extent and depth you make of these links and conversations.

These conversations happen in real life and online. The online version for us is partly a practical thing – we all cannot be in the same place at the same time. But also it opens us to the world and the ideas and work of others who share our interests. Online also allows us to present ourselves, and represent our qualities and thinking. It also can represent the use we can make of real conversations, observations and reflections in real-life. This is something of equal important to me and those of you, who, like me, are established professionals, as well of those who are just in the process of establishing yourselves. Others will look you up, and your Blogs will speak volumes about you as a serious, intelligent and active professional person.

So our Blogs are not just about the programme, but present us, and represent our qualities as professionals. Keep Blogging, and see your Blogs as something that will continue and be part of a richer, more dynamic presence that you are creating for yourself.

You might like to look at: the Seven Habits of Highly Connected People