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.

a journey of ...'Self discovery?'

Thanks Sandy for your Blog comments and bringing the idea of self-discovery to the Blog community. I fully agree with your statement about the need to see learning as something we gain through engagement rather than thinking in terms of being 'spoon fed'. For me, most training, and all too much formal education is spoon fed in that the teacher decides on what constitutes 'appropriate learning and standards'.

In higher education we are trying to foster independence, critical thinking and ‘self discovery’ which we believe underpins professional practice. You see it all the time in those commensurate professionals that you meet: they are confident in what they know; they are comfortable with not knowing; they find different ways to explore and develop their own knowledge and insights; they can work with complexity and they try to think and act ethically… and more of course.

It might be worth thinking about these and other attributes as you develop your online profile?

I have also posted this to Sandy's Blog comments ... it might be good for you to try posting a comment to someone else's Blog as a practice?

The Teacher's tale of Blogging ...

This Blog contains a number of links to Blogs and other sources and are the ways in which I think Blogs have been used in a university programme to enable learning and teaching.

1. Firstly, over to Jess and a short description of her WBL Project to set the scene.
(0.0 – 51 seconds)


2. Google Reader. As a teacher I use this to bring all my students', colleagues' and other external Blogs and content to a single place. That's why a 'reader' is often also termed an 'aggragator'.


3. This is a link to one of my Blog posts and provides an example of how I share resources with my students. Nothing radical here, just a way of ‘teaching’ by providing links to resources.

4. In this example, a colleague delivers a 'content' element of the programme.

5. This is a bit more exciting. here students and staff from anywhere in the world, are commenting to a student assignment. This asynchronous posting of Blog and comments allows students and staff to build a collective understanding in a learning network.


6. In this example, I am providing generic feedback on an assignment by identifying good examples. It may be that there are 5 key points you want to put across in an assignment. Rather than giving individualised feedback (often repeated to individuals) I provide generic feedback linking to specific good examples. This draws students away from 'doing what I tell them' and gets them thinking about what the assignment is asking them to do.


7. Finally, we believe in making learning open so learning tasks can be engaged from anywhere, at anytime (prior to enrolment, after graduation) and that anyone can join the learning community. Anyone who comes across this Blog can engage in learning, or see the quality of thinking the student has engaged in.

Making use of your Blog over the summer

One of the things we noticed over last Christmas was the number of students who continued to use their Blog even though formal 'teaching' had ended. 30% of BAPP students in year 1 continued to Blog. This shows perhaps that for some students, the Blogs were of intrinsic value beyond their use of the programme.

For those of you moving into your project phase, it might be very helpful to share your ideas with other students, and noticing who is either researching a similar subject, or using similar research tools.

You could do worse than to post up a brief summary of your project to see what support and exchange of ideas you might get?